China has always been a major mobile devices producer ("always" meaning since mobile devices exist, of course), and this year's estimations are clearly showcasing this fact. 2007 should end with about 560 million handsets produced, according to a recent report presented by China's Ministry of Information Industry. In 2006 China produced 480 million units, which means the current year will bring an increase of approximately 16,7 %. And since we're talking about percentages, we have to mention that last year the handsets produced in the Great Wall's country represented a 47% share of the global production and all the devices to be manufactured in 2007 will cover around 55% of the world's market.

China's Ministry of Information Industry noted that the number of licensed mobile device producers in China has reached 80 this year. However, Motorola is expected to have the highest handset production number, with 50 million units manufactured. Nokia and Samsung will also be among the biggest producers with about 40 millions estimated for each company. The Chinese home-brands Konka, ZTE, Huawei Technologies and TCL will add another 70 million handsets to the total.

134 million handsets were already produced in the first quarter of 2007, so the 560 million estimation is quite close to the truth.

China's main handset production areas are Beijing (where Nokia and Sony Ericsson are based), Tianjin (Motorola and Samsung have factories there) and Shenzhen (with Samsung, Foxconn International Holdings and other Chinese brands). According to the Ministry of Information Industry, each area is capable of manufacturing over 100 million handsets in a year.

As an interesting fact, 560 million is the approximate number of handsets sold in 2004 worldwide. Now, after only three years, China alone is to produce this number of handsets, which says a lot both about the mobile devices market expansion and about China's development.