"Made in China", heard more often than you'd expect

Oct 5, 2007 16:23 GMT  ·  By

A new research revealed one surprising fact. More than half of all mobile phones that are sold worldwide are manufactured in China. Things don't stop here, as sales numbers are in a continuous growth that is very unlikely to stop in the future.

The "Made in China" tag usually stands for cheap copies that usually bring only half of the performances and quality of the original product. Having so many mobile phones of this type is definitely not good, especially as most phone battery explosions have been caused by counterfeit products made in China.

Things vary, according to developers, as some quality mobile phones are made in this country. There is a great chance that the cheaper, easier to manufacture ones make most of the export coming from China. The country's electronics manufacturing sector is the largest one at this time, excelling when it comes to mobile phones.

Handset shipments from this country have increased more than 20 percent, compared to last year's results. A recent research from Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Center (MIC) has proved that shipments exceeded 130 million mobile phone units until now and have high chances of going surpassing 166 million in the fourth quarter.

GSM phones are the most popular ones, as China's government has still not licensed any 3G networks. "The shipment figure did not live up to expectations, however, due to sluggish shipments from Motorola and its production partner Compal Communications", said MIC industry analyst Wu Shan-Tung. "Nokia continued to outsource more of its CDMA mobile phones, and Qualcomm launched the value-line QSC-series CDMA chipsets, which significantly increased the price competitiveness of CDMA mobile phones in emerging markets, such as India, the Middle East and Africa", added Wu.

Cheaper CDMA phones for emerging markets also boosted demand from China's low cost factories over the past period. The most impressive thing about this tendency is that there are high chances of it growing even more over the next few years.