Asia - Europe Business

ZTE Q3 Profits Down 27.2%

Chinese telecom equipment provider ZTE (0763.HK) reported 4.7 billion Yuan in revenues for the third quarter of 2005 on Thursday, up 3.7 percent year on year. However, net profits for the quarter dropped 27.2 percent year on year to 155 million Yuan. For the first three quarters of 2005, ZTE recorded 15 billion Yuan in revenues and 842 million Yuan in net income. According to ZTE, mainland China's telecom carriers' total capital expenditure for the first eight months of 2005 decreased by 14.4 percent year on year to 104 billion Yuan, with the hardest hit sectors PHS, CDMA systems and switching systems.

Lisa

Carrefour Acquires Remaining 35% Stake in China JV

The Kunming Department Store Group Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen SE 000560) has announced that it has signed an agreement to sell its 35% stake in its JV supermarket with Carrefour for RMB41.715m. The listed department store operator said, in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, that the joint venture supermarket (Kunming Carrefour Supermarket Co., Ltd.) will become Carrefour's first wholly-owned unit in China after the deal.

The venture was set up in June 2002 with registered capital of USD12m, with Carrefour investing USD7.8m for a 65% stake, and the listed company holding the remaining 35% interest.

Carrefour will continue to seek cooperation with Chinese partners, but it is expected that it will look to buy out other joint venture partners in the future. Carrefour has expanded its presence in China since its first entrance into the country, with 65 retail outlets and 13 global procurement centres.

Lisa

China's Mobile Phone Market Grows to 377m Users

China, already the world's biggest cell phone market, continues to grow apace, and by the end of September this year, reached 377m mobile phone subscribers, an average of 29 mobile phones per every 100 people. This represents a growth of 7.7% from June, when the country had 350 million users, and up 23.6% from 305 million in June 2004.

Helped by that growth, the number of short text messages sent in September by mobile devices rose 40.2% over a year earlier to 218.5 billion. Though outnumbered by mobile phone users, the number of fixed line telephones also rose to a total of 345 million by the end of September.

Lisa

ZTE to build Mongolia's First Next Generation Network(NGN)

ZTE, one of China's leading telecom equipment manufacturers, has announced that it has signed a contract with the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Mongolia to build the country's first NGN (Next Generation Network). The NGN will be used to regulate the international IP phone call market in Mongolia.Mongolia has 12 IP operators and each of them has its own IP gateway, which leads to fierce competition.

In a bid to regulate the IP operating market, the ICTA decided to adopt NGN technology of ZTE to build a unified international gateway. After the program is set up, all the operators in Mongolia will connect to the international network through the gateway.

Lisa

Nokia Chooses Four Cities for Trial Mobile TV

Nokia will test mobile TV in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Qinghai at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, Nokia Greater China Multimedia Business senior product manager Dai Jinghe said. Nokia plans to finish preparation and launch commercial mobile TV operation before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Dai said Nokia will use DVB-H technology. According to Dai, the biggest problems for launching mobile TV in China are content and charging. Dai said the price of mobile TV will not be very high and will use the same billing system as SMS and MMS.

Lisa

HP TIE UP with NEC FOR CHINA INFORMATION SYSTEMS

NEC Corp and Hewlett-Packard have reached an agreement to tie up their information systems business in China, with HP providing equipment maintenance services for the systems built by NEC in China for the retail sector. The partnership will help NEC to have a maintenance network covering a broader region within China, and thus help to expand its potential market in the country, thanks to HP’s 250 bases across the country. The first stage will include NEC using HP's network for the Seven 11 Holdings Group, which plans to open 360 stores in China by 2008.

Lisa

TCL Sells over 1M Handsets in September

TCL Communications announced that the TCL handsets sales in September increased 39 percent from August to 1.005 million handsets. Of the one million handsets, 385,900 were sold in the mainland China, up 69 percent from August. The other 619,200 handsets were sold in overseas markets, up 25 percent from August.

Lisa

Siemens Signs Contract Expansion Contract with China Mobile

Siemens recently signed a GSM network expansion contract with China Mobile for Anhui, Shanghai and Inner Mongolia, Sohu reports. The total amount of the contract is more than US$70 million. Siemens will provide base station equipment, power switches and software upgrade services. All of the network expansion projects in the contract will be completed before the end of 2005. To date, Siemens has supplied 34 GSM networks in 26 provinces for China Mobile and China Unicom.

Lisa

Free Mini-Report: Mobile Gaming In China, October 2005

"Revenues are set to triple this year, with user numbers growing even faster," says Research Editor Elias Glenn, "Pacific Epoch's analysis and company profiles provide insight into what - and who - is driving the industry."

China's Mobile Game Industry provides a breakdown of all the players along the industry value chain, anaylsis of the factors that make the Chinese mobile game market unique, as well as over 60 company profiles and analysis of key deals in the sector. The resulting data and analysis paints a clear picture of this booming market.

Companies profiled include all of China's listed wireless value added service providers and Internet portals, as well as dozens of start-up game developers and publishers, many of which are currently looking to for venture capital investments.

To download a free "Mini" version of the report, Download 20051013-Pacific_Epoch__RIR__Mini_Mobile_Game_Report_.pdf .

Lisa

QQ Fantasy Open Beta Scheduled For Oct 25

Chinese Internet company Tencent announced on Wednesday that its in-house developed 2D Q-style online game QQ Fantasy will start open beta testing on October 25. According to Tencent, it will give prizes to the top 10,000 closed beta players. The player with the highest level in the game will receive 500 QQ coins. The 10,000th player will receive 10 QQ coins. QQ Fantasy has been in closed beta testing since March 25.

Lisa