Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
reached 200 employees. Dancom went into i nancial dii culties in 1980. The i rm started
to explore the possibilities of using the i rm's capabilities and advantages from maritime
communications in an emerging market of onshore personal communications (mobile
phones). Shortly after, the i rm started activities in producing personal mobile phones
and changed its name from Dancom to Dancall Radio.
In the early 1980s, some of the cluster i rms and spinof s diversii ed into an emerging
technologically related area of personal mobile communications equipment. This of ered
new opportunities as the mobile communications market opened with the introduction
of the common Nordic standard for mobile telephony (NMT). When the market boomed
during the 1980s, these i rms were among the world-leading producers of phones for this
network. They were able to use the inherited and developed strong capabilities from the
maritime radio communications. In 1985, Shipmate expanded into mobile phones with
the new activities placed in a separate division, Cetelco. After two years, Cetelco had 25
engineers working with R&D. They developed and produced mobile phones for several
European and East Asian markets.
The cluster i rms experienced high growth because of the success of local i rms that
diversii ed into mobile telephony, and the North Jutland region became visible as a
strong region in this industry. However, in the last half of the 1980s the market changed
because of rapid technological development. The small i rms were facing an international
market with high development costs and production capacity demands, and intense price
competition. The industry life cycle and market growth inl uenced the cluster signii -
cantly, but they also opened up new opportunities for diversii cation as the market and
technology expanded further.
In 1987, seven experienced engineers from Dancall founded T-Com. The engineers
disagreed with Dancall's overall market strategy and decided that they could do it better
themselves. T-Com's strategy was to develop mobile phones just like its parent company,
but dif ered by only focusing on R&D as a subcontractor. Other companies would then
produce and market the phones under their own brands. In the same year, they devel-
oped their i rst mobile phone. In the last half of the 1980s, there were a total of 15 i rms
in the industry in Northern Denmark. One of the entrant i rms had been closed, but new
i rms had continued to enter. The majority of these were spinof s.
The common European standard for mobile telephony (GSM) was implemented as a
new standard in 1992. The success of the NMT standard inspired the European telecom-
munications operators to create a common European system based on digital technol-
ogy. A race began between the leading producers in the world to be the i rst to be able to
produce a complete terminal for this network. The challenge of building a GSM mobile
phone was seen to be a major economical and technical challenge for the mobile com-
munications i rms, since it was based on new digital technology. To cope with this, the
two competitors Dancall and Cetelco formed a pre-competitive joint venture company,
DC Development, with the purpose of building the basic modules of a mobile phone in
close cooperation with Aalborg University.
DC Development was founded in 1988 and located at a new science park, NOVI, close
to Aalborg University. DC Development succeeded in development of basic modules,
and the parent companies were among the i rst in the world to produce a GSM mobile
phone in 1992. This technological achievement increased the international visibility
of the cluster and strengthened the region's reputation in wireless communications
