China becoming top mobile phone market
China will become the world's largest mobile phone market by revenue for the first time by year end, overtaking the United States, an industry report said. Internet guru Mary Meeker has identified the country as the most mobile nation in the world.
Nation becoming top mobile phone market. [China Daily]
Phone sales will reach $87 billion in China during 2014, a jump of 53 percent year-on-year. That compares with $60 billion projected sales in the US, Strategy Analytics said.
Smartphones dominate sales. Chinese shoppers will buy more than 400 million smartphones this year, according to local research company Analysys International. The amount is on track to break 500 million by 2016, it said.
Meeker acknowledged China's role in the global mobile Internet sector. The world's second-largest economy is moving swiftly to become a leader in mobile commerce, helped with applications installed on smartphones, according to Meeker. She is a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
As of last year, more than 500 million Chinese were using mobile devices - primarily smartphones - to connect to the Internet, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The penetration rate of mobile Internet users rose to a record 81 percent in 2013.
China beat the US in terms of smartphone shipments in 2012.
The growth in mobile devices is driven by the country's rapid shift to fourth-generation telecommunications technologies, analysts said.
Leading players, such as Samsung Electronics Co, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Lenovo Group Ltd, have pledged to expand their distribution channels, and a widening product offering is diversifying demand in China.
Although China leads the global mobile phone market in many ways, the Strategy Analytics report said the US is most likely to remain the most valuable market by profit for a while.
"High average selling prices and huge operator subsidies will make the US a very profitable market for major device brands such as Apple and Samsung," it said.
The world's leading smartphone brands may find it difficult to maintain a high growth rate in China, where analysts said the high double-digit expansion may be nearing its end. Additionally, local players are vigorously expanding businesses on their home turf.
Lenovo, better known for its PC business outside China, is betting on smartphones for future profit. The Beijing-based company became the second-largest smartphone vendor in China by the end of the first quarter, data from Analysys International showed. Its 12.3 percent market share only lags behind Samsung.
Coolpad - Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co Ltd - as well as Huawei and Xiaomi Corp enjoyed near double-digit market share and Apple's share dropped to less than 7 percent.
Bryan Wang, China head at consultancy Forrester Research Inc, said 4G is a necessary feature for companies such as Xiaomi to put into their portfolio as Chinese are eager for faster Internet speeds.
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With such improved sales and growing market share, Chinese mobile producers now need to develop their own OS in order to go higher up in the value chain.
Besides, development is not always all rosy; it comes with its particular problems:
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Waste-to-energy plants: A burning issue in China
‘Great Leap Forward’
The emphasis on incineration of solid wastes in China started in the 1990s.
The 12th Five Year Plan heralded the golden age of incineration and is in a sense a “Great Leap Forward.” Under the Plan, 263.6 billion yuan (US$42.3 billion) will be spent for waste management, 65 percent of which will be for treatment facilities. Most of these will be for incineration plants. At present, China is constructing nearly 100 incineration plants a year — half the world’s total.
As China’s economy has developed, it has contributed to a rapidly growing middle class which is fast becoming more educated, savvy with the use of social media, and becoming restive because of the pollution of air, water, land and food.
As was observed in the West during the post-1970 period, China is now playing catch-up to the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome.
This is manifested by the fact that between mid-2007 and mid-2012, there were at least a dozen protests against incineration plants by local residents.
This is because of perceived health hazards due to toxic emissions like dioxins and wastewater disposal. Expected decline in the land and house prices around the sites is also a major concern.
Hangzhou hit the global headlines on May 10 not because of its renowned oolong tea or that it is the headquarters of Alibaba, which may soon become the world’s largest ever IPO. It was because some 10,000 local farmers staged a protest against the construction of an incineration plant in Zhongtai, a suburb.
The protest achieved its objective. Shanghai Daily reported that work on the construction has stopped. City officials said, “We will invite the local people to participate, fully listen to and seek every one’s opinions...” In our view it is the right decision. However, the public participation and consultation should have been carried out before the decision to construct was taken, not after the protest.
Equally, there has to be a serious attempt to reduce the amount of waste generated by increasing public and industrial awareness of the problem. Reduction of waste generation and increasing recycling have to be major components of the solution.
Asit K Biswas is a Distinguished Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore, and co-founder of Third World Centre for Water Management, Mexico. Zhang Jingru is a doctoral student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
[Post taken from Tianxia at CDF]