Sales of China’s information technology products, excluding software, rose 42 percent year on year to 1.7008 trillion yuan in the first nine months of 2004.

Sales were partly driven by strong exports of IT products, which rose 52 percent year on year to US$144.6 billion during the nine-month period, the newspaper, run by China’s Ministry of Information Industry, reported.

The growth in exports partly offset the 45 percent year-on-year growth in the imports of IT products to US$134.1 billion in the same period, the report said, citing ministry statistics.

The industry’s profit rose 43.5 percent year on year to 65.9 billion yuan (US$7.96 billion) in the first nine months of 2004, mainly driven by the profit growth of telecommunications products, the report said.

China’s IT industry sold 160.93 million mobile phone handsets during the nine months, an increase of 37 percent year on year.

But domestic handset brands surrendered market share to their foreign rivals in the first nine months of this year as price competition worsened.

Domestic brands such as TCL Communication Equipment Co., Ningbo Bird Corp. and Konka Group saw their market share drop 1.5 percent in the first nine months from a year ago.

Domestic mobile phone makers dominated the sector with more than 50 percent of market share last year.

Around half of those sales were exports, which rose 45.7 percent to 80.69 million units during the same nine-month period.

Software sales maintained a steady pace of growth, rising 32.5 percent year on year to 180 billion yuan in the nine months, the report said.

Foreign funded-companies increased their presence in the electronics and IT industry during the first nine months, with their sales up 50.1 percent year on year at 1.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 77.9 percent of the industry’s total sales and up from 75.8 percent a year ago.

(Shenzhen Daily October 27, 2004)