Ningbo Bird, China's largest homegrown mobile phone maker, posted a 52 percent drop in fourth quarter net profit Saturday as intense domestic competition eroded margins and offset an export drive.

An increasingly crowded mobile phone industry in China — the world's biggest with over 300 million subscribers — has bitten into earnings of mobile phone makers.

Bird, battling it out with the likes of Motorola Inc. and Nokia, said rising higher-margin exports, efforts to improve its product mix and cost cutting should help it weather the competition.

Its net profit fell to 37.37 million yuan (US$4.52 million) in the October to December period from 77.69 million yuan.

Full year profit slid 15 percent to 207.46 million yuan, while turnover fell 5.5 percent to 10.2 billion yuan.

“In the reporting period, the company faced difficulties from supply shortages, a slowdown in the growth of domestic handset users and ever-increasing competition,” it said in its earnings release.

A senior executive said the firm expected to fall short of its 2004 sales target by at least 30 percent due to growing competition from foreign manufacturers.

(Shenzhen Daily March 21, 2005)