BEIJING, Sept. 12 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: HK08235), releases its article on 2007 still witnessing a promising mobile communication card market.
With the rapid increase of mobile phone users, the China mobile communication card market continued to maintain a rapid increase in the first half of 2007 after undergoing a high rise in 2006. In the first half of 2007, the sales volume of China mobile communication cards reached 365 million, featuring a growth of 23.6% compared with the same period in 2006.
Fig. 1: Sales Volume of Mobile Communication Cards in 2006Q1-2007Q2
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Source: CCID Consulting July 2007
The reason behind the sales volume of China's mobile communication card market increasing rapidly is mainly composed of the following two factors:
I． The growth of mobile phone users and frequent replacement of phone cards create a huge demand for mobile communication cards. With the continued reduction of the mobile terminal price and mobile service charge, the China mobile phone service has been popularized thanks to the rapid growth of users in the last two years. At the end of June 2007, China mobile phone users exceeded 500 million. At present, mobile operators are providing several kinds of preferential service packages to better seize the mobile communication market and attract more loyal users. Many mobile phone users in China, especially users from the younger generation, often change their phone number in the same mobile communication net or between different nets to enjoy the benefits of promotional service packages for new users. In addition, in some provinces where the mobile communication market is insubstantially supervised, users often change their phone numbers to escape overdue charges. However, frequent mobile phone number changes also facilitate the growth of the mobile communication card.
II． The diversification of value-added services speeds up the updating of phone cards. Current mobile phones are not limited to existing voice service, and many value-added services have become new service growth points for operators. To meet users' varying demands for value-added services, the Ministry of Information Industry began to adjust the information service access code this April, replacing older, pre-existing codes since January 2008. Therefore, the old, built-in code in some SIM cards can no longer be used, but need to be replaced. Owing to this, mobile operators purchased more SIM cards in the second quarter in order to prepare for the card replacement in the second half of the year. The rapid growth of the mobile communication card sales volume in the second quarter put a great impetus to the rapid growth of mobile communication card market in the first half of the year. Furthermore, the sales revenue of the China mobile communication card rebounded in the second quarter of this year after suffering a drop for 5 consecutive quarters. The main reason is not only due to the growth of sales volume but also that the increase of the unit price of the updated cards contributed to the growth of sales revenue of the entire market.
Fig. 2: Structure of Mobile Communication Card Products in the First Half
of 2007
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Source: CCID Consulting July 2007
The structure of mobile communication card products is relatively stable. In the first half of 2007, SIM cards still dominated the overall market with a proportion of 88.04%, while UIM and PIM cards featured a market share of 8.68% and 3.28% respectively. GSM-based data services dominate China mobile communication market, and SIM cards widely applied in G-Net constitute a great majority among the structure of mobile communication card products, which will not be challenged in short term. In addition, with the ceaseless improvement of CDMA services, the number of CDMA users has increased steadily. At the end of June 2007, the number of CDMA users of China Unicom has exceeded 40 million, much less than the number of GSM users. Therefore, the sales volume of UIM cards used for CDMA net is much less than that of SIM cards. Compared with the growth of the former two mobile communication services, the PAS service witnesses a shrinking market, a dropping sales volume of PIM cards and a diminishing market share due to the market seizure by mobile phones.
As far as the development of the mobile communication card market is concerned, the monopoly of foreign manufacturers has been broken by the rapidly developing domestic enterprises. Many manufacturers have been launching fierce competition in the China market, which became white hot in 2006 and still continues. Fierce competition has come at the cost of mobile communication cards being abruptly reduced last year and profit for the industry being curtailed. For the sake of survival and development, the mobile communication card manufacturers not only closely follow the development of the application technologies of and high-end products of China mobile communication cards to consolidate their domestic market share, but also speed up the overseas service expansion to further widen their survival space.
At present, mobile payment, a new application in mobile communication, is still in its infancy in China's market with its relevant immature technology, and the mobile payment market represented by NFC and SIMpass has not yet blossomed in large scale. Under these circumstances, some mobile communication card manufacturers have already begun to cooperate with upstream chip manufacturers and downstream operators in order to attempt to cultivate a new profit growth point in this new field. This cannot only enable enterprises to step out of the competition bog, but can also facilitate the diversified development of the mobile communication card to improve the competition of the product.
An increase in mobile users and the rapid development of value-added services will continue the rapid growth of sales volume of the China mobile communication card, and the emergence of the mobile payment market and the issuance of future 3G licenses will put a new impetus on product updates in the mobile communication card market.
About CCID Consulting
CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. (also known as CCID Consulting), the first Chinese consulting firm listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange (GEM) of Hong Kong (stock code: HK08235), is a direct affiliate of the China Center for Information Industry Development (hereinafter known as CCID Group). Headquartered in Beijing, CCID Consulting has so far set up branch offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Harbin, with over 300 professional consultants and industry experts. The Company's business scope has covered over 200 large- and medium-sized cities in China. Apart from home market development, CCID Consulting is establishing international cooperation links across the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, by setting up agents in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Russia, with the aim of going global.
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