DBTel Inc. While Taiwan's technology industries often enjoy a home field advantage in China, the mainland's burgeoning cellular industry has for the most part been snubbed in favor of bigger, more established foreign companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Philips, Siemens, and Sony. The official at DBTel, who asked not to be named, said an exception was made for his company only because it got to the party early, establishing itself on the mainland back in 1993. DBTel now has handset plants in Shanghai and Tianjin, and shipped about 400,000 units last year. Mike Lin, an official at the Taipei Computer Association, is optimistic that the forum will lead to more licenses for Taiwan handset makers. There are mutual benefits in this sort of arrangement, Lin said.
China has a huge market, and Taiwan has great expertise in making handsets.
Joseph Yeh, a senior analyst at Market Intelligence Center in Taipei, sees the forum as a sign that the door is opening for Taiwan handset makers, but says it will still take a while before they can cross the threshold. I think Taiwanese makers will be allowed to make handsets on the mainland, but the soonest you might see any major impact would be one year later, Yeh said. Still, even if the Taiwan handset industry is allowed into China, there is no guarantee that it will flourish there. One of the obstacles for Taiwan's handset makers is the lack of established distribution channels on the mainland. The China market may be a gold mine, but it is so huge that mining it is an expensive and time-consuming proposition.