China accounts for half of Asian handset sales

In the first half of 2006, China sold 53 million mobile handsets with retail mobile handset saes worth US$9 million. According to a recent comparative report covering the Asian region China leads the region and has the fastest-growing mobile phone market in the world. The survey of 11 Asian handset markets was conducted by Singapore-based research firm GfK Asia and covered a range of models of GSM, CDMA and PHS handsets. Acoording to GfK Asia total regional handset sales were around 107 million over the first half of the year, which suggests that China now constitutes nearly 50 percent of the total Asian market by volume. Sales across the region were up 36 percent year-on-year and were worth US$16.5 billion over the half year period from January to June. GfK Asia predicts sales to reach at least 241 million units by the end of the year.

The report found that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics were the five most popular brands across the region and that there is a strong move towards colour display models. GfK predicts that monochrome handsets will soon be at the end of their product life cycle.

CMI - 22/8/06