mobile market in china

The domestic sales of cell phone made a breakthrough of 100 million in China in 2006.
In 2007, the domestic sales of cell phone in china were 190 million, increased by 74% as compared with 2007. The impetus mainly came from the rapid growth of new mobile phone users and old customers' upgrading demands. Of 190 million cell phones, 140 million were made through formal channels, while the rest were made through informal channels such as smuggling, counterfeiting and renovating.

Sales volume

For year of 2007, sales volume had reached about 23 billion USD, increased by 17% as compared with 2006. The drop of cell phones' average price made the increment of sales volume lower than the increment of sales because mobile communication company vigorously promoted the sales of cell phones binding to their service which have lower price.

Export volume

The export volume of China's cell phones added up to a record high of 385 million in 2006, increased by 69.3% as compared with 2005. In 2007, this figure reached 483 million, increased by 125.45% as compared with 2006. As far as 2006, the export volume had reached 31.214 billion USD, increased by 52.47% as compared with 2005. The export volume of 2007 was 35.6 billion dollars, increased by 114.01% as compared with 2006.

Development trend

The latest 2–3 years' development trend (2005–2008) has showed that the mainland market is developing in two directions. One of which is extremely low price mobile phones in emerging rural markets, while the other is in multimedia mobile phones with diverse functions such as mobile television, MP3 and GPS.
From 2011 smartphones, especially running the open source Android operating system, have become increasingly popular in the Chinese mobile market. This is due to the Android system providing the possibility for factories to produce smartphones with increasing ease, which in turn has allowed prices to decrease even to below RMB 1,000 Yuan. These cheap smartphones are also exported to every corner of the world thanks to internet sellers such as alibaba.com, aliexpresss.com and ctutu.com. 

Pricing

China's cell phone market is dominated by products with price under 2000 RMB yuan (about 290 dollars). Products at this price have accounted for 60% of the whole cell phone market, competing with China's local brands, informal cell phones and international brands.

Some features of China's mobile phone

• All cell phone service must be prepaid. Pre-payment can be made by buying a card (50 or 100 yuan) and calling the cell phone company, or through commercial banks. When out of town, pre-payment is not easy, usually solved by calling a friend in your own town to add money.
• There is a clear distinction of cell phone and cell phone service in China, unlike some countries such as Japan where the cell phone is sold by and locked to the cell phone service companies. This tradition was broken by the 2009 introduction of Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
• Stealing of cell phones and therefore SIM cards is quite common. When a cell phone is stolen, the owner must visit the cell phone service company to cancel the previous card, in order to retain the previous phone number and pre-payment.
• A short message (SMS) or duanxin (Chinese: 短信), usually 0.10 yuan per message (up to 160 alphabetic or 70 Chinese characters), can be sent to any other cell phones across different cell phone service companies, GSM, CDMA or PHS.
• Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) or caixin (Chinese: 彩信) is also available, usually 0.3 yuan per message (up to 50 kilobytes).
• Calling (Chinese: 彩铃), usually 5 yuan per month, is an additional service by which the called party can send as the ring tone to the calling party the music (or any kind of sound) that the called party likes . Usually detested by foreigners, but loved by the Chinese young.