Chunghwa Telecom's Upgrade to CDMA Attracts Many Bidders
August 10, 1999 (TAIPEI) -- Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. announced that it will upgrade its AMPS mobile phone system to code division multiple access (CDMA) by July 2001, and many global producers are showing interest in supplying equipment.
Major manufacturers of CDMA equipment -- including Lucent Technologies Inc., Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., LG Electronics and Northern Telecom Ltd. -- have expressed interest in supplying gear.
Chunghwa Telecom is set to purchase an infrastructure powerful enough to support more than 1 million telephone numbers. Such a massive procurement is expected to cost up to US$150 million.
Samsung Electronics is scheduled to participate in the Taipei Telecom & Network Exhibition in mid-August, and it plans to begin marketing its GSM handsets in the Taiwan in the fourth quarter.
Samsung has the largest global market share in such handsets, at 28.5 percent, according to a Dataquest report on CDMA systems. After Samsung are Qualcomm Inc. (18.6 percent), LG (18.1 percent), Hyundai (10.3 percent), Sony Corp. (9.7 percent), and Nokia (6.7 percent), the Dataquest report also said.
CDMA wireless phones are the most popular in Korea, and CDMA systems have more than 30 million users across the globe. The number of CDMA users is expected to reach 150 million by 2002, according to Dataquest.
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