Tianjin, a coastal city in north China, is aiming to become Asia's largest mobile phone production base in the not too distant future, according to sources with a recent workshop on the information industry.
The city now hosts Asia's largest mobile phone producer, Motorola, which produced 13 million mobile phones last year.
Asia's major mobile phone producers Samsung and Sanyo have alsoset up factories in Tianjin. Samsung's factory will produce the new generation CDMA mobile phones, and the company will also operate a research and development center in Tianjin.
In 2000, Tianjin and Beijing accounted for 56 percent of China's total mobile phone production. Tianjin is already an important global mobile phone manufacture center, with numerous mobile phoneparts factories operating well in the city and its surrounding areas.
Sources at the workshop pointed out that the Asia-Pacific region's manufacture centers are moving from Tokyo, Seoul and Taiwan to Tianjin, Beijing and Shanghai.
China is already the world's largest mobile phone market, with its number of mobile phone users exceeding 120.6 million by July this year.
Even such a big consumer group only accounts for 9.2 percent ofthe nation's population, which indicates that the market potentialin China is incomparable to any other place in the world.
It is estimated that the number of mobile phone users in China will be more than doubled to 250 million in the next five years.
Adding to Tianjin's advantage is its good investment environment, including well-developed infrastructure.
The Tianjin authorities have vowed to offer investors the best government services, and have already set up a project service unit at its economic development zone to serve the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The city expects that the sales of its manufacture sector will increase from the current US$10 billion to US$30 billion by 2005.
(Eastday 09/24/2001)
