BEIJING—The Japanese electronics company Kyocera and China Zhenhua (Group) Technologies signed an agreement to set up a joint venture to produce mobile-phone handsets in China’s southwestern Guizhou province.
Registered capital will be US$14.89 million, of which Kyocera holds 70 percent. The company plans to manufacture 240,000 CDMA handsets a year, increasing production to 1.58 million by 2006.
Mitsubishi Electric teamed with China’s West Lake Electronics Group to set up the Mitsubishi Soyea Mobile Communications Equipment (MSM) in the city of Hangzhou to produce 1 million GSM handsets a year.
MSM has a registered capital of US$7.12 million. Mitsubishi Electric holds 51.25 percent. Production will increase during the next two to three years to 4 million. MSM’s products will be marketed under the brand name Trium.
Another Japanese company, Sanyo Electric, will start production of 50,000 CDMA handsets at its Tianjin Sanyo Telecommunication Equipment joint venture in November.
Hitachi wants to cooperate with Hisense in the field of CDMA handsets, and Nokia is joining hands with Beijing-based Capitel.
More tie-ups are expected before year-end, because the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) will not grant any new production licenses for CDMA handsets besides the 19 it has already issued. Motorola is the only foreign company with a license, so all other foreign players must seek cooperation agreements with local license holders.
China’s second operator, China Unicom, will launch its new CDMA network in October.
