Wireless technology provider Qualcomm Inc said on April 3 it still believes four million mobile phones using its CDMA standard could be sold in China this year despite a disappointing sign up rate in the first quarter.
"We are less than three months down the road from arguably the largest launch in the history of wireless, and everybody is making statements of success or failure. I think that's extremely premature," Qualcomm's senior vice-president of marketing, Jeffrey Belk, said in Hong Kong.
Belk said Qualcomm was sticking to hopes that four million CDMA mobiles could be sold in China this year.
China Unicom Group, the parent of Hong Kong-listed China Unicom Ltd, said earlier it signed up just 650,000 CDMA users for the entire group in the first quarter, which is a long way away from its more aggressive target of seven million in 2002.
Analysts have said Unicom's target is unrealistically high and estimate that Unicom will sign up as few as three million users of CDMA, or code division multiple access network.
Most of China Unicom Ltd's 29 million subscribers are on the more widespread GSM mobile standard. China Unicom, which is leasing the network from its parent, is marketing CDMA as a high-end service to steal customers from rival China Mobile (Hong Kong).
Belk said he believes CDMA will continue to progress in China and eventually become a success "despite the expectation is so high in some instances and the reality is so low".
Qualcomm has said repeatedly over the last year that growth in China would be an important part of its overall growth as a company in the coming years.
Belk said globally the ratio of CDMA over GSM phones is about 25:75. He declined to give Qualcomm's projection of that ratio in China.
( April 04, 2002)
