BEIJING-A department chief from the Ministry of Information Industry, Xie Linzhen, has said mobile phones manufactured by local companies would comprise 15 percent of the market by the end of this year, up from 8 percent by the end of June. Currently, 10 domestic companies have been authorized to make mobile phones, and they produced more than 1.4 million handsets in the first half of this year.
Xie Linzhen expects major Chinese manufacturers, such as Datang, Huawei and Zhongxing, to take up one-fourth of the base station market and 40 percent of the switching market. The government has urged its telecom operators to use more local telecom equipment to further boost production growth.
According to Xie Linzhen’s forecast, domestically made handsets and base stations could both take up to half the market until the end of 2003, while the switching systems could occupy 70 percent of the market.
