Strong growth in CDMA sales
1 November 2002
China United Telecommunications said it had recorded strong growth in subscriber numbers for its code division multiple access (CDMA) network. The country's second largest mobile phone company added 700,000 users in the 13 days to October 8, bringing the total to 3.7m.
Company president Wang Jianzhou said he was confident that the end-of-year target of 7m users could be achieved. The size of the increase surprised analysts who had expected the National Day holiday period to be relatively quiet for sales. However, some have raised concerns about the health of its CDMA business. ABN Amro telecoms analyst Joe Locke said: "We believe that the company is aggressively pursuing state-dictated targets with little regard for underlying economic benefits to shareholders."
Meanwhile, Unicom said that the total number of its GSM subscribers had reached 36.14m at the end of September, up from 33.1m at the end of June.