BEIJING—An insufficient supply of CDMA handsets is hampering the development of China Unicom’s CDMA network. The shortfall in supply is pushing prices of available handsets higher, further limiting fast subscriber growth.

China Unicom President Wang Jianzhou also admitted that some CDMA handsets on the market showed serious quality problems.

While the GSM handset market is still ruled by foreign companies, with only 11-percent market share for domestic companies, of the 19 manufacturers licensed to produce CDMA handsets, there is only one foreign company, Motorola (China). Other foreign suppliers were forced to join hands with domestic suppliers, which are rather slow ramping up handset production.