China's cell phone exports posted a year-on-year increase of 43.5 percent in July. [China Daily]
Every profound change in telecommunications inevitably leads to a reshuffle of competitors and only provides opportunities to innovative companies, Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the China Mobile Phone Alliance, said at a seminar on the cell phone industry held on Aug 16 in Beijing.
Themed "Chinese chips create China brands", the seminar hosted experts who shared ideas about home-developed handset chips and innovation by Chinese companies in the industry.
Great changes have taken place since the beginning of this year, said Wang.
"We have witnessed the rise of smartphones, which now surpass traditional computers in sales," he said.
"It also marks the downfall of copycat cell phones," he added. "Huaqiangbei is not likely to return to its glory days."
Huaqiangbei, an area in Shenzhen lined with consumer electronics shops, is one of the world's busiest cell phone markets and was once the largest counterfeit handset distribution center in China.
"Chinese companies must seize the opportunity offered by the latest changes and integrate their resources to win an advantageous position in the reshuffle," Wang said.
His ideas were echoed by Qiu Shanqin, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
"We have to seize the opportunity because the future mobile Internet will surely have a scale beyond our imagination and will profoundly change our way of life," he said.
Qiu believes that innovation should be "all-round".
Li Liyou, president and CEO of Spreadtrum Communications Inc, said "chips are the core technologies for cell phones".
"Without patented core technologies, we cannot win any case in intellectual property disputes," said Li, whose company was among the seminar's sponsors.
A global semiconductor manufacturer and processor maker for the wireless market, Shanghai-headquartered Spreadtrum has more than 20 patents on basic chip technologies, according to Li.
In January, the company announced the world's first smartphone processor using 40-nanometer technology, which it plans to employ in all its chips by the end of the year.
The 40 nm processor offers lower cost and power consumption, yet higher performance, than current 65 nm and 45 nm products.
"Despite all these advantages, problems exist in forming an industry chain, which cannot be solved by Spreadtrum alone," Li said.
Spreadtrum is now supplying processors to Chinese digital electronics company Comio for cell phones and tablet computers. Its products are also used by global giants including Samsung.
