China Telecom (CHA) has reportedly finished its five million CDMA terminals tender and more than ten handset manufacturers are included in the successful bidder list that is topped by Samsung and ZTE.
Over 30 manufacturers participated in the bidding while traditional major manufacturers, including Samsung, ZTE, Hisense, Coolpad and Huawei gained the major part of the deal. Samsung maintains its dominant position in China's CDMA handset market with a 20% share of the tender and ZTE's tender handsets cover all the low, medium and high-end markets. At the same time, Hisense also gains over a 10% share while Motorola gains a 3% share with only one type of handset.
In addition, manufacturers such as Bird, Gionee and Okwap who originally focused on GSM appear on the CDMA terminals tender list for the first time. Other CDMA manufacturers like Amoi also gain their foothold with some special functions, including CMMB and GPS.
As the first terminal tender of China Telecom since it took over the CDMA business from China Unicom, this tender mainly concentrates on low-end handsets, targeting at the network switch of PHS users. At present, China Telecom has about 60 million PHS users. If 60% of them shift to CDMA network, the user number of China Telecom's CDMA business will increase by 36 million.