Though they're 'cloned' products, the Chinese mobile phones that copy the designs of other popular brands are flying off the shelves. It's even reported that their sales is higher than that of the third largest cell phone vendor in the world.
The cause of this rise in sales is the 'clearing' strategy done by the distributors and the high number of sales for second-rate Chinese cell phones without license. These imitated products copy the models of more famous brands and also use similar names those brands, such as "Mokia". Most of these cheap cell phones use chips made by Mediatek.
Gartner calculates that the total sales of those cloned cell phones reaches 150 million units, which is much higher than the sales of LG Electronics, the third largest cell phone producer in the world. The producer from South Korea can only sell 117 million cell phones. Gartner mentioned the calculation based on the sales from stores to the last consumer.
These cheap phones are selling hard in the midst of the globally declining sales of cell phones. However, the declining trend of cell phone sales in the global market stopped in the third quarter. Based on the calculation of Gartner Global, the marketing research institution, the global sales experienced a year on year growth of 0.1 percent at the third quarter of 2009. (Thomas Hadiwinata/KONTAN/C17-09)
