The highly-automated state-of-the-art facility will be the seventh colour monitor facility in the world for the Korean electronics major.

Samsung Electronic's vice-chairman and CEO Jong Yong Yun said that the first phase of the project will be operational by June 2001 and will have a capacity of one million colour monitors. The second phase, to be operational by 2005, will entail an investment of $25 million and will enhance the annual capacity to four million units.

Samsung India's manufacturing facility will take up manufacture of `Syncmaster' and `Samtron Colour' monitor brands in the 14", 15" and 17" screen sizes.

"India is a priority market for Samsung Electronics and hence the Korean parent is ready to support its subsidiary in India by making all the investments required, provided they are economically justified," Mr Yun said, who is in India on the ocassion of completion of five years of Samsung in India.

Mr Yun said that Samsung's vision for India includes deeply rooting itself in the Indian consumer electronics and information technology industry, complementing the Indian software skills with Samsung's hardware expertise and contributing to the development of India as an IT super power.

"We want to expand operations in the Indian market to include products and businesses other than the ones we are currently doing here," Mr Yun said. He however, did not elaborate on the proposed products to be launched in India in future.

Mr Yun said that the progress at Samsung India was satisfactory and it was looking at a qualitative growth as against a quantitative growth, a super excellent company as opposed to a big company.

Worldwide, Samsung Electronics is a world leader in colour monitors with a 20 per cent market share and is targeting global colour monitor sales of 20 million this year. In India, Samsung commands a market share of 45 per cent and is the leader in the colour monitor segment and has set a target of one million colour monitors and a market share of 50 per cent for the next year.

Mr Yun said that although Samsung invested in China before India, as far as the colour monitor business was concerned, the Indian market was growing far more rapidly due to its software development strength and a large pool of English-speaking population.

Samsung Electronics India is being positioned as an IT essentials company and has a product portfolio that constitutes 70 per cent of the value of a standard PC. Its product portfolio includes colour monitors (around 19 models ranging from 14" to 19" including TFT LCD monitors), storage products-HDDs ranging from 4.3 Gb to 35 Gb, ODDs (52X CD-Rom, 12X DVD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-RW combo drives), multimedia kits and laser printers.