Ericsson China

19 Pages 4635 Words

1. Introduction

Industry Overview

Current situation of mobile network industry in China
Chinese mobile network industry has made substantial progress in the past few years and became the largest market in the world. Currently, with over 260 million mobile subscribers and more than 4 million new subscribers are added every month in 2003. [EXHIBIT 1]
From a technological standpoint, the most common mobile networks now in use in China are second generation GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), which provides voice and limited data services. 3G use is expanding in some nations, including Japan and South Korea, but there is now no single global standard for 3G, which promises more functions and faster data transmission, is still in discussion whether to be put into practice in China right now.

Industry structure
In mobile network industry, it is necessary for service operators to equip several cutting-edge network technologies to deliver its service to customers. Therefore, normally, many providers which have their own strengths in certain technological field exist in this industry and provide their own solutions to the operator. Generally, those industry structures are categorized in three players. There are several players in each sector and now competing each other.












1) Mobile Service Provider
Mobile Service Provider is an entity which delivers several kinds of solution to Mobile Operator. Mostly, there are three type of player such as contents provider, application provider and service provider in this part.

2) Mobile Operator
Mobile Operator has strong power in this industry, since there are only two players in China (China Mobile, China Unicom). And they are tightly backed up with Chinese government and they are controlling the market.

3) Mobile Network Equipment Provider
Mobile Network Equipment Provider is an entity which delivers several kinds of infrastructures to Mobile Ope...