Samsung's participation will also facilitate other domestic firms' entry into China in areas such as CDMA systems operation and manufacturing of base station equipment, cell phones and repeaters. The company earned high marks in terms of technology but lost the bid by tending a relatively high bidding price, officials said. But LGE said that it would try again to crack the Chinese market by taking part in additional biddings for systems and handsets, expected to be held soon. Samsung won in the first bidding for 13.3 million lines out of a total of 70 million lines scheduled to be constructed by 2004. The handset bidding will begin from the middle of this year, with the first one for 4 million units.
China is considered to be the world's last remaining golden telecom market.
Some 72.5 million Chinese subscribed to mobile-phone services as of the end of last year, up 67.7 percent from a year earlier, with the number surging to 90 million last February. According to China Unicom, a state-run telecom operator which organized the bidding, a CDMA network covering 300 areas and handling 13.3 million subscribers will be launched in the country this October. Korea expects to carve up at least 10 percent of the Chinese systems market and 30 percent of the handset market. Meanwhile, the government decided to foster exports of Korean CDMA technology overseas, designating it a state policy project. Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald.