China 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. 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 videoconferences on handsets. However, to grab a share of the telecom pie, domestic and foreign phone makers have to survive the competition and price war on the Chinese mainland, which has caused handset prices and phone makers’ profit margins to plunge. Continue >>