Pantech & Curitel Communications Inc., South Korea’s third-largest maker of wireless phones, is setting up its North American base in Cypress as part of a bid of to sell phones under its name here.
The move comes amid changes at a big Pantech customer, Hauppauge, N.Y.-based Audiovox Communications Corp. Earlier this year, Alameda-based UTStarcom Inc., which counts Japan’s Softbank Corp. as a big investor and customer, bought Audiovox.
Pantech lost out in the bidding for Audiovox, which sells Pantech-made phones under its name.
Audiovox still uses Pantech for production but eventually could shift to its own phones made in China.
Based in Seoul, Pantech now has a small office in Irvine and plans to move to an 85,000-square-foot office and warehouse near Katella Avenue and Valley View Street.
“We selected Cypress over Irvine because it’s closer to LAX,our products come in via air shipment through Los Angeles,” said Dan Schrader, Pantech’s director of human resources and administration here.
Pantech is set to base its North American management and distribution in Cypress, a hub for Asian companies. The company expects to employ more than 100 workers in Cypress, Schrader said.
The move is part of a plan to build the company’s name here, where it isn’t as well known as South Korea’s top phone makers, LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
“We want to get our brand into the marketplace,” Schrader said. “We are well known in the industry but not to the general public.”
The company picked Orange County for its local headquarters “because the county is a good place to do business,” Schrader said.
The Cypress facility is set to handle distribution, sales and warranty repair work, as well as technical support, according to Schrader.
Pantech last year sold more than $600 million worth of phones in the U.S. through Audiovox, Schrader said. He declined to provide sales projections for the first year of selling phones under its name.
Company officials don’t have an exact launch date yet for their own phones, according to Schrader.
“We’re dealing directly with Verizon, Cingular, Sprint and T-Mobile,” he said. “It takes a while to get things in the pipeline.”
Pantech’s wireless business traces its roots to the telecommunications arm of Hyundai Electronics Co., which spun off the business as Hyundai Curitel Inc. in 2001. Later that year, Pantech Co. bought a majority stake.
Pantech was founded in 1991 as a maker of wireless pagers.
The company has signed a six-year sublease with New York-based L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. for the building at 11240 Warland Drive in a deal valued at $3.3 million, according to Cushman & Wakefield Inc., which represented defense contractor L-3.
The building, near the intersection of Valley View and Katella near the Los Alamitos Race Track, was left by L-3 earlier this year when the company moved its X-ray screening device production to St. Petersburg, Fla., said Cushman & Wakefield’s Robin Dodson, who along with John Minervini and Erik Larson represented L-3.
Warland Investments Co. owns the building. John Shumacher and Barry Hill of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. represented Pantech.
