Bird seeks funds to expand CDMA
(eastday.com)
Updated: 2004-04-04 09:45

Shanghai-listed Ningbo Bird Corp, China's biggest handset manufacturer, will raise more than 600 million yuan (US$72.29 million) through selling additional shares to invest in its code division multiple access business.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC ), the stock market regulator, approved the firm's move on April 2 on its Website.

The Ningbo-based company will sell an additional 32 million yuan-denominated A shares on the Shanghai stock market soon. But it declined to reveal the exact time for the sale.

"We will inject the proceeds from this share sale to strengthen our CDMA business," said a pubic relations official identified as Zhao at Ningbo Bird on April 2.

Hearing the news of the CSRC's approval, Ningbo Bird's share price rose 1.07 percent to hit 20.76 yuan yesterday.

Ningbo Bird's share sale plan is seen among handset makers as a step to carve out a bigger share of the growing China's CDMA market, the second largest in the world by number of subscribers.

China United Telecommunications Corp Ltd, the only CDMA mobile operator in the country, said in its annual financial report this week that it had attracted 16.91 million CDMA subscribers by the end of 2003.

"The production capacity of CDMA handsets in China is limited at present and that's the reason why Ningbo Bird wants to expand in the sector to target the potential market," said Zhu Min, an analyst at Analysys International, a local information technology consulting firm.

Zhao with Ningbo Bird said its CDMA handset sales reached 400,000 units last year while its global system for mobile communication, or GSM, handset sales reached 11 million in the period.

Compared with GSM phones, the CDMA handsets allow users to enjoy more features of digital services, such as stock information, online game and multi-media functions.

CDMA handset sales only account for 14.5 percent of the whole Chinese handset market now, according to Analysys.

Nokia Oyj, the world's largest handset maker, launched its first CDMA handset at the start of the year in China since its entry into the country.

The launch of the CDMA handset enabled Nokia to regain the No. 1 position in the Chinese handset market at the end of last month after ceding itself to Motorola Inc in 2000, said CCID Consulting Co Ltd, a research arm under the Ministry of Information Industry.

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