China market: Local handset vendors have over 32% shipment growth in 3Q08, says paper

According to the Taiwan-based Industrial Technology Intelligence Services (ITIS), total handset shipments in China in the third quarter of 2008 had an increase of 6% compared to the same period of 2007, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) reported. Shipments of first-tier handset vendors dropped 1.3% in China, while shipments from local handset vendors, many of whom adopt MediaTek's platforms, had a growth of 32.4%.

Thanks to holiday season demand, there were almost 174 million handsets shipped in the third quarter last year in China, up 6% on year. GSM/GPRS accounted for 90% of the total shipments, at about 155 million units. On the other hand, CDMA handsets declined because of consolidation among China's telecommunication service providers, said the report.

However, MediaTek's shipments in December 2008 only increased to 16 million units from 14 million units in November, lower than its earlier expectation. ITIS forecasts that the China handset market in the first quarter of 2009 will not be optimistic.