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Unicom Begins Selection of CDMA Suppliers
China Unicom, constructor of the country's only CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile network, on Thursday raised the curtain of competition CDMA phone makers as it begins to select the suppliers.
Among the 19 licensed companies, Motorola (China) is the only foreign firm.
China Unicom's CDMA network will start operation in the fourth quarter of the year. The network could support 15.15 million subscribers and cover 300 cities in the country.
As mobile telecom has become the most rapid growing industry in China, many companies want to get their spoon of meat in the mobile phone market.
These 19 licensed firms are Bird, Kejian, ZTE, Capitel, TCL, Haier, Eastcom, Konka, Soutec, CEC, Datang, Zhenhua, Langchao, Hisense, Daxian, Nanjing PTIC, Tianjin PTIC, Xoceco and Motorola.
Many of the 19 licensed CDMA phone makers are home appliances vendors like Haier, TCL, Konka, Hisense and Xoceco.
The industry watchdog, the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), is not likely to issue more licenses for producing CDMA mobile phones as 19 are already too much for the market, according to an MII official.
If foreign brands want to enter the Chinese market, setting up joint ventures or jointly producing CDMA mobile phones with Chinese partners would be the best solution.
On the other side, not all the licensed Chinese companies have the confidence to be successful in the market, they need matured foreign partners.
Hitachi, Japan's major CDMA phone maker, and Hisense have announced they will co-operate in manufacturing the mobile terminals in China.
The venture plans to capture a tenth of the upcoming CDMA market in China and may eventually expand to 5 million phones a year, said Zhou Houjian, president of Hisense.
Most of the phones made at Hisense's Qingdao plant will be sold in the local market and some in the US.
``We have to start the business in China,'' Masaki Kawase, a chief engineer at Hitachi's Digital Media Products Division. For exports, ``the main target is the US,'' according to a Bloomberg report.
China is now the biggest mobile telecom market with over 120 million subscribers. But nearly all of them apply the GSM system (global system for mobile communications), a standard that mainly used in Europe and Asia.
In comparison with GSM, the CDMA will attract customers with lower service charges and low radiation.
Source: chinadaily.com.cn
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