{ Chinese People and Their Mobile Phones: Market Increases on a Large Scale, Driven by Demand }

China mobile market enters a development period led by the demand for mobile upgrades from the second half of 2003, in 2007, over 60% of users changed their mobiles with over 90 million mobiles sold for this purpose. The reasons could be attributed to faster function upgrades, higher performance- price ratio, shorter product life cycle, and customized service by SP.

The number of new subscribers reached a new record in recent years with over 86 million new subscribers in 2007 and over 7 million per month. According to statistics, new subscribers mainly come from rural markets and 3rd/4th-level cities. Joint efforts by SP and manufacturers further release the demand in these areas. There were 547 million mobile subscribers in China in 2007, and the large subscriber number, differentiated demand from segmentations and the demand for mobile upgrade exchanges for 3G in the following years will all push mobile market development on a large scale.

Mobile has fulfilled the popularity of color screens, cameras and music functions over several years, and the development of integrated 3C technology keeps on giving mobiles new functions such as MP4, TV, blue tooth, GPS and WIFI, which boosts the function evolution, though some renovations may fail to be popularized. The hardware function expansion is rather limited at the moment so that the function expansion will mainly happen in application and services.

The iPhone launched by Apple in 2007 has resulted in a craze, which shows that Internet function integration will be a major method to expand mobile functions. The best proof is that leading brand Motorola has sounded the call to “put Internet into your pocket and make the world wireless.” Meanwhile, outline and industrial design are the other solutions for technical renovation, the sliding phone from Samsung and super slim mobile by Motorola have both led to some trends and made mobiles in vogue.

In the future, mobile will fulfill wireless information and entertainment needs, which will demand a faster technology renovation than any other consumer electronics, and it is the direct driving force behind boosting mobile market development on a large scale.

The competition of products on the market will be rather fierce while the China mobile market is developing on a large scale. The homogeneity, price wars, and sinking channels will direct consumer behavior, and manufacturers will turn from seizing market share to chasing profit. The certificate of mobile authority and the launch of the China 3G mobile market will stimulate market competition and create concentrated market share in already-advantaged brands and less market share in small brands. It will also create competitive cooperation among manufacturers and distributors.

The Chinese People and Their Mobile Phones: Market Increases on a Large Scale, Driven by Demand by Itamar Medeiros, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.