China-made mobile phones help Bangladesh telecom boom
Updated: 2013-10-10 17:49Mobile phone sellers say low-end users have less interest in known global brands which sell for double the prices of Chinese sets but have less features.
They say such users feel comfortable as importers give a year's warranty for Chinese-made brands.
Tofael Ahmed, proprietor of a store named Nokia Telecom in Dhaka 's Eastern Plaza Shopping Complex, said there is more demand now for low-priced Chinese-made mobiles than leading global brands.
Industry leaders said that it would not be exaggeration to say that China-made handsets now help ordinary Bangladeshis, even rickshaw-pullers and day laborers, to have mobile phones.
Even if Chinese handsets are relatively cheaper but they are of high quality and durable, they added.
"Chinese handsets are contributing a lot to the growth of Bangladesh telecom market," Faisal Alim, general secretary of the Mobile Handset Importers Association of Bangladesh, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
Failsal said that just like in any other country, mobile phone in Bangladesh is now more of a necessity than a luxury.
He said that the quality and durability of Symphony, Maximus, Micromax, Sfone, King mobile, Walton, Smart and Strawbery, which are all made in China, can now compared with known global brands.
Echoing a similar view, Mosharraf Hossain Ahmed, who has been using a 30-32 China-made mobile handset since 2008, said more Bangladesh people, particularly the youths, are now being attracted to android smart-phones from China.
He said prices of mobile handsets will further plunge if Chinese manufacturers can set up plants in Bangladesh.
On an average there are 1.5 million new mobile connections in Bangladesh every month. According to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, mobile phone subscribers reached more than 109.349 million at the end of August with about 12 million new users in the first eight months of this year.
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