DHAKA - A couple of years earlier, Abdul Hamid never thought that one day he could afford to buy a mobile handset.

Hamid, a rickshaw-puller in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, is now not only buying a mobile handset for himself but also for his wife who lives in a rural village in Bangladesh where 31 percent of about 153 million people still live below the national poverty line.

"I want to buy two low-cost China-made handsets for which I get one year warranty," said Hamid who came to an electronics store in a posh city market with his friend Abdul Motaleb.

"Last year my friend Motaleb bought a Chinese handset for 1,500 taka ($19). Then I told him that your handset would develop technical glitches after a few months and would be useless. But I was wrong since the handset is still working. Many of my friends also bought cheap Chinese mobile phones and they are still working well," Hamid said.

"Recently my friend Motaleb told me that I can now buy a Chinese- made Symphony handset at a low price of 1,050 taka ($13). So I will buy one for my wife. I hope she and our children would be very happy to have a mobile phone for the first time," he added.

Importers and traders are saying that Bangladesh consumers prefer to buy low-cost Chinese brand rather than the more expensive Korean or Western brands.

China-made mobile phones-- Symphony, Maximus, Sprint, Digital, I- Max, etc -- have now earned a good name in Bangladesh market, accounting for about 90 percent of monthly sales volume, they say.

According to them, sales of low-priced Chinese original brands have posed a threat to the domination of leading global mobile brands.

They said that brand giants such as Nokia and Samsung which dominated the Bangladesh market for many years are now facing challenges from known and little known Chinese brands.