BenQ places high hopes in China's handset market

BenQ Corp (明基電通), one of the nation's top handset makers, said yesterday that it aims to secure 10 percent of China's cellphone market in three years, after the company won a license last week to sell its own-brand handset products there.

"We spent all of 2004 preparing for this day," said Irwin Chen (陳盛穩), vice president of BenQ, at a press conference ahead of the Computex trade show in Taipei.

Sales target

"Our goal for 2005 is selling more than 1 million BenQ-branded handsets on the mainland, or a 2 percent share of China's cellphone market," added Chen, who is concurrently the general manager of the company's networking and communications business group.

BenQ's current mobile phone shipments to China account for around 5 percent of its forecasted shipments of 10 million handsets this year, according to the company's chief marketing officer Jerry Wang (王文燦).

Joint venture

To date, BenQ has relied on its joint venture with the China-based CEC Telecom Co (CECT, 中電通信) for sales of its handsets under a dual-brand strategy in China.

After obtaining the Chinese license, BenQ will focus on a single-brand strategy and will soon start large-scale promotion of its own-brand mobile phone business in targeted markets, including China's northwest and eastern areas as well as Guangdong Province and Chengdu, in Sichuan Province.

The company said it expects to see the positive effect brought up by the license in the second half of the year.

Despite the newly acquired license for China, the company has no plans to revise its target for handset sales for this year, according to BenQ's president and chief operating officer, Sheaffer Lee (李錫華).

"The goal of 10 million handsets remains a challenging one for us this year," he said.