HP gets upgraded cellphone license for Chinese market

Hewlett-Packard Co, the world's biggest personal-computer maker, won a license from the Chinese government to sell more models of mobile phones in the country.

In December 2005, regulators granted the company a license to sell just one mobile-phone model in China, Liana Teo, a Singapore-based spokeswoman for HP, said today by telephone.

The new license allows the Palo Alto, California-based company to make and sell a wider range of handsets, Teo said, declining to elaborate before a formal announcement.

The introduction of more handset models will help HP add customers in the world's biggest mobile-phone market by users. Nokia Oyj, the world's largest handset maker, sold 4.91 billion euros (US$6.8 billion) of phones last year in the Greater China region, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, compared with 2.81 billion euros of revenue from the US.

In the second quarter, Nokia had a 29.5 percent share of the Chinese market, followed by Motorola Inc with 18.5 percent and Samsung Electronics Co with 10.8 percent, researcher Analysys International said.

Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), the world's third-biggest PC maker, had 6.7 percent of the handset market and was the nation's best-selling domestic brand, the Beijing-based research company said.

HP had less than 1 percent of the market, Analysys said. The US company received permission to sell its hw6515 iPAQ model of phones in 2005. The handset runs Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile operating system and includes word-processing and spreadsheet applications.