The mobile communication sector is expected to maintain the status as the biggest money-earner across China in the coming ten years, said Wan Mingjian, general manager with the TCL Mobile Communications Co Ltd, stressing that TCL will defeat many foreign handset rivals in three years.

TCL is expected to rise to No 3 on the Chinese handset market within a year and tries to become one of the top five mobile communications operators in three years, Wan said.

The Chinese mobile communication market is facing restructure, and the domestic brands will soon capture more than 40 percent of the market, Wang said. Domestic handset producers began to struggle in the mobile communication market in 1999, and snatched 10 percent of the market shares by 2000, breaking the monopoly of foreign handset producers. The market shares captured by domestic mobile phones have reached 15 percent by the end of last year with a batch of brands such as TCL, Kejian, Bird and Haier gaining reputations.

Ten domestic handset manufacturers boasted more than 500,000 of production scale each a year so far with some topping two million handsets. If they complete their plan to expand production scale to more than one million a year, domestic handset producers can capture more than 40 percent of the market shares soon, Wan said.
The supply will reach a little more than the market demand in China for the next two years, so the competition will gear up, Wan predicted.

Foreign handset brands, playing a leading role on the Chinese mobile phone market for a long time, are trending downward. Ericsson has withdrawn the handset production market, and Motorola made deficits in the previous two quarters. Domestic handset manufacturers should gasp the opportunity and gain a rapid growth, Wan said.

The Chinese mobile communication market has exceeded the US in July last year to become the largest one around the world, with an annual growing pace of 80-150 percent. TCL boasted an output of 1. 5 million handsets last year with the sales income and profit reaching three billion yuan (US$360 million) and more than 300 million yuan (US$36 million) respectively, Wan said.

According to the target, TCL Mobile Communications Co Ltd aims to increase its domestic sales volume to six million this year, with the sales income up to US$1 billion, capturing nine percent of market shares in China.