Group sales dropped 15 percent DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY — German electronics and engineering conglomerate Siemens AG posted a drop in net income for its fiscal third-quarter Thursday as sales dipped across the company’s broad range of products.Net income for the third quarter fell to €632 million ($723 million as of June 30, the period being reported) from €725 million for the same period a year earlier, Siemens said in a statement.Third-quarter group profit from operations was €1.0 billion, compared with €1.1 billion a year earlier. All Siemens operating groups reported weak sales and orders. Group sales dropped 15 percent to €17.4 billion, while orders decreased 10 percent to €17.2 billion. Excluding currency translation and the net effect of acquisitions and dispositions, sales were down 7 percent and orders 1 percent.Siemens Chief Executive Officer Heinrich von Pierer said in the statement that he was satisfied with the third-quarter results, pointing out that the group was on its way to achieving its target earning ranges for the 2003 fiscal year.“I expect a similarly positive performance in the fourth quarter,” von Pierer said in a conference call. Siemens is targeting a net profit of €2.2 billion for the 2003 fiscal year, he said during the call. For the first nine months the company reported a net profit of €1.7 billion.Siemens is also aiming to achieve full-year sales of about €75 billion, down from €84 billion in the 2002 fiscal year, Chief Financial Officer Heinz-Joachim Neubürger said in the conference call.Economic weakness in many of Siemens’ core markets and the strong Euro have had a negative impact on the company’s sales, according to Neubürger. Siemens’ Information and Communication Networks (ICN) group reported a third-quarter loss of €125 million, including €72 million in charges, primarily at Efficient Networks, a Siemens broadband network systems subsidiary.The ICN enterprise networking division saw third-quarter revenue decline to €893 million, from €955 million the year before.The ICN carrier networks and services unit posted a drop in third-quarter sales to €801 million, from €1.1 billion a year earlier. The Information and Communication Mobile (ICM) group saw sales drop 14 percent to €2.2 billion and orders fall 2 percent to €2.3 billion. Excluding currency translation effects, sales fell 10 percent while orders grew 5 percent. The group posted a €17 million profit for the second quarter, compared to a loss of €9 million a year earlier.The ICM mobile networks division reported a profit of €36 million on sales of €968 million, compared to a loss of €21 million on sales of €1.2 billion for the third quarter the year before.The ICM mobile phones unit, however, posted a third-quarter loss of €42 million on sales of €922 million, with a volume of 8.1 million handsets. In the same quarter a year earlier, the unit posted a profit of €28 million. At the end of June, Siemens had 417,000 employees, down from 426,000 at the end of the third quarter in 2002. Von Pierer said he couldn’t rule out further cuts but declined to provide details. Software Development