Outsourcing farming to the Americas

Mobile handsets – ringing the changes

Innovation and agility are key in the high-speed race for market share in the world’s largest mobile-phone handset market.

Nokia – on the skids

Squeezed by a lack of hit products in the smartphone and mass-market mobile segments, Nokia’s loss of market share shows no sign yet of a rebound.

Samsung – China’s new number one in handsets

Samsung’s popular handsets, especially the Galaxy S2, have helped it capitalise on the problems of Nokia to become the best-selling handset maker in China.

Spreadtrum – chip maker rides the 3G wave

Supplying chipsets for China’s successful homegrown TD-SCDMA technology is powering sales growth and Spreadtrum has also moved into the smartphone market.

ZTE – industry leader seeks to reverse profit margin decline

Stellar success of the Android V880 smartphone helps drive strong handset sales.

Selected Financial Charts

A selection of key financial data.

Financial sunshine and shade

Shadow lending is ebbing but this does not herald a harsh government crackdown. More likely is a gradual process aimed at reasserting Beijing’s control.

Anti-trust probe on China Telecom

The Chinese government is investigating China Telecom (0728:HKG) and China Unicom (0762:HKG), the nation’s two state-controlled fixed-line carriers for alleged monopoly violations, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said. The agency claimed the two carriers were abusing their dominance in the market to prohibit competitors from entering the broadband internet business by overcharging rivals for leasing their networks. The two carriers could face fines of 1% to 10% of their annual broadband revenues if found guilty. The probe marked the first case against state-owned enterprises (SOE) under the anti-monopoly law.

Renminbi internationalisation and financial centres

So far, most of the action in quest to “internationalise” of the renminbi currency has taken place in Hong Kong and it is not the renminbi itself that is being internationalised but the “redback”, the offshore renminbi, which is not freely interchangeable with the mainland currency. Therefore, the question arises: Does the rise of the offshore renminbi reinforce Hong Kong’s position as China’s financial centre or will it eventually enhance Shanghai’s prospects too?

Pressuring China with a proposed new trade area

A proposed new US-led trade area appears intended to pressure China, but will it work?