The telecommunications industry in China made a profit of 5.5 billion yuan (about US$663 million) during the first six months of 2003.

The profit was down by 35.4 percent compared with the same period of last year.

According to the Ministry of Information Industry, the intense competition on the domestic mobile phone market has been the majorfactor contributing to the profit reduction.

Prices of mobile phones fell during the first half year, and the peak sales season for a new mobile phone model has shortened to between three and six months.

In addition, China Unicom's CDMA (code division multiple access) service attracted fewer than three million new users during this period, far fewer than the planned sales goal, which has resulted in a large overstock of CDMA mobile phones.

(People's Daily July 31, 2003)