Home>>Business
Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Mobile phone users set to rise

About 500 million Chinese people, or one out of every three Chinese, will own a mobile phone by the end of 2007, a latest industry research report said.


PRINT DISCUSSION CHINESE SEND TO FRIEND


About 500 million Chinese people, or one out of every three Chinese, will own a mobile phone by the end of 2007, a latest industry research report said.

Thirty percent of users will own cell phones that would be compatible with the next generation of mobile telecom technology, according to the report.

As China's mobile phone penetration grows to one-third from the current 18 percent, the value of the telecommunication-related market will reach 520 billion yuan (US$62.65 billion) in 2007, said CCID Consulting Co Ltd, a Hong Kong-listed information industry consulting firm, in its report.

Currently, 244.12 million users in the country own mobile phones, slightly fewer than 244.93 million fixed telephone subscribers.

"The new mobile phone users will create a multi-billion-dollar market," Li Dongping, an analyst at CCID, said in the latest report. He also predicts that 30 percent of Chinese mobile phone users will have third generation handsets in 2007.

These phones allow customers to exchange voice and data more quickly than the existing cell phones, making it possible to hold video conferences on handsets.

However, to grab a share of the telecom pie, domestic and foreign phonemakers have to survive the competition and price war on the Chinese mainland, which has caused handset prices and phonemakers' profit margins to plunge.

Ningbo Bird Corp, the largest home-grown handset maker which announced its third quarter earnings yesterday, is a good example of how tough the market is.

During the three-month period ended on September 30, the Zhejiang-based company's profit margin dropped to 16.7 percent from last year's 23.84 percent.

Bird said its profits in this quarter jumped 9.8 percent to 60 million yuan, or 0.38 yuan a share, compared with a year ago. In the period, the company's revenue rose 38.6 percent to 2.26 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, mobile phone operators also have to expand their business scope to improve their income as average revenue per user is declining too.

"China Mobile and China Unicom, the current mobile operators, have already begun to provide value-added services such as short message system, or SMS," according to Li of CCID, adding that other services being offered to customers include receiving and sending e-mails, down-loading games and being able to browse Websites on their mobile phones.




Questions?Comments? Click here
    Advanced






Chinese companies warming up for 3G

China's mobile subscriber number to reach half a billion in 2010

China's Mobile Phone Users Reach 250 million





 


US manufacturers' wish to complain to WTO about RMB: a good thing for China ( 4 Messages)

548 billion yuan invested in China's education last year ( 4 Messages)

President Hu talks about Taiwan, SARS, RMB ( 6 Messages)

How far we are away from a space power? ( 6 Messages)

India's after joint military maneuver with China ( 13 Messages)



Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved