Senior executives from Siemens Mobile and Ningbo Bird Co Ltd (Bird) in East China's Zhejiang Province initiated a strategic partnership yesterday.

The all-round alliance comes in the wake of a memorandum of understanding signed between the two groups in Berlin in early May, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao paid a State visit to Germany. Under the partnership, Bird will sell Siemens' mobile phones at its 30,000 retail outlets nationwide, while Siemens will help Bird further crack the overseas market through its global sales network. Bird will also provide aftersales services for Siemens' mobile phones.

Siemens has 180 service centers nationwide and Bird has 450 service centers across the country, and it is expected that the integration will expand Siemens Mobile's aftersales service network to cover 300 cities. At the same time, Siemens will supply its mobile phone platforms to Bird for the latter to develop its own brand of phones with its own designs, software and user interfaces for the Chinese market.

Also yesterday, both sides signed an agreement to set up a joint training center in Shanghai with a branch in Ningbo, where Bird is located, to improve the skills of staff in terms of technology, sales and management, and other fields.