Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd said yesterday it will
open more than 500 mobile phone retail stores by the end of next
year to tap into the world's biggest mobile phone market.
Gome, China's No. 1 home appliance vendor will open independent
mobile phone retail stores in the big cities to sell handsets such
as Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Ningbo Bird models. Gome said it had
signed agreements with eight phone makers to group purchase five
million phones in 2008.
Gome, which named the new stores "Gome Mobile," aims to generate
revenue of 19.8 billion yuan (US$2.64 billion) from mobile phone
business in 2008, double this year's level. That is expected to
account for 10 percent of total handset market revenue in the
domestic market, according to Gome's Vice President Sun Yiding.
In 2010, Gome's revenue from mobile phones is expected to hit 40
billion yuan, 15 percent of China's handset market, according to
Sun.
"China's phone market is heavily competitive and the player with
strong distribution ability will win the market shares, like new
star Tianyu," said Kevin Wang, a Shanghai-based analyst at iSuppli,
a US-based IT research firm.
The factors for success include sectors like promotion, market
coverage, capital, price bargain and control of resellers, Wang
added.
Personal computers and mobile phones are the potential profit
engines for Gome, which has already dominated China's home
appliance market, Sun said. Gome and Dell Inc, the world's No. 2 PC
maker, signed an agreement to sell Dell computers in its stores in
September.
(Shanghai Daily November 10, 2007)
