China market: Household appliance vendors joining competition for smartphones

China market: Household appliance vendors joining competition for smartphones

While China-based handset vendors ZTE, Huawei Device, Coolpad and Lenovo have been dominating the smartphone procurement projects released

by mobile telecom carriers in China, a number of local household appliance vendors including TCL, Hisense, Konka, Changhong, Haier and

Skyworth have stepped up efforts to grab orders from telecom operators, according to industry sources.

China surpassed the US as the world’s largest smartphone market in the third quarter in 2011 with annual sales of smartphones expected to

reach 150 million units in 2012, the sources estimated.

TCL and Hisene have begun to roll out customized models for the top-three carriers – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, while

Changhong has set up a handset joint venture with Foxconn International Holdings (FIH), indicated the sources.

In 2012, TCL plans to build up a chain of 300 exclusive sales outlets for smartphones and to launch over 50 new smartphones covering all

price segments, in addition to customized models developed in cooperation with telecom carriers and social networking websites, the sources

pointed out.

Changhong will invest CNY 700 million (US$110.84 million) in the Changhong-FIH joint venture, which aims to roll out 10 million handsets a

year at full capacity, said the sources.

The availability of chipset solutions from Qualcomm, MediaTek and Marvell as well as a growing number of handset design houses in China

have enabled appliance vendors to venture into the smartphone segment, commented the sources.