Motorola overhauled in handset market
1 September 2003
Motorola overhauled in handset market
Ningbo Bird has beaten Motorola into second place to become China's top seller of mobile phones. The Chinese manufacturer captured 15 per cent of the mainland's handset market in the first half of the year, compared with Motorola's 14.2 per cent, according to Ministry of Information Industry figures. TCL, another Chinese handset manufacturer, captured 11.6 per cent of the market, followed by Nokia (9.7 per cent) and Konka (6.6 per cent).
Overall, mainland firms gained about 55 per cent of the market in the period, compared with 39 per cent for calendar 2002. Just over 80m units were sold, 54 per cent domestically and 46 per cent abroad. Sales of CDMA models rose 341 per cent year-onyear to reach 9.2m units, while GSM and GPRS phone sales were 70.8m - an increase of 49 per cent. Ningbo Bird registered net profits of Yn107m in the first half, up 90 per cent on the same period last year.