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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (4369)	2/10/2005 2:49:29 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Indian women best bet for Chinese mobile maker: [India News]: New Delhi, Feb 10 : Futuristic mobiles are often considered a man's toy but Chinese handset maker Ningbo Bird hopes that women will drive its growth in the Indian market. Bird has launched 10 new models for the Indian customer, with one product (SC24) aimed specifically at women users. The SC24, which could pass off as a fashion accessory with its stylish looks, boasts of features that help women keep track of their monthly cycle and biorhythm. "No one in the market has launched a woman-specific product so far," company director (marketing) Adarsh Shastri proudly declared on the sidelines of the ongoing Mobile Expo 2005 here. "These features are unique," Shastri told IANS. The product is priced at Rs.5,000 ($115). Bird, which has invested $10 million, hopes to penetrate the entry level and mid-segment markets with its products, whose range starts from a modest Rs.3,000. "Seventy percent of the phones sold every month are entry level models," he said. Shastri said the Indian market was very similar to the Chinese in terms of size and target customers (read middle-class). "A lot of them buying mobiles are doing so for the first time. Our phones are not any cheaper than Nokia or others are, but they are packed with more features," he said. "There is a wrong impressing that mobiles manufactured in China are cheap or are bad in quality," Shastri said, pointing out that most mobile handsets including that of Nokia were manufactured in China. Bird is considering setting up its handset manufacturing unit in India by next year, but it had already begun talks for setting up a software development centre here for developing local language tools. India is considered the second largest market for mobile phones after China, where an estimated 270 million people are cellular phone users. India's mobile phone industry is witnessing a boom with more than 1.6 billion phones sold every month. Already, mobile phone users have surpassed fixed-line users by over two million. There were 48 million mobile users compared to 46 million fixed-line connections as of December 2004, data released by the government said. Still tele-density is a poor 8.59 percent. The urban market in the country alone is estimated at 300 million. --Indo-Asian News Service newkerala.com