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The number of China Telecom's and China Netcom's Little Smart subscribers for 2003 is set to more than double the figures of the previous year, a domestic market researcher predicted at the weekend.
"With a good response from the market, Little Smart will contribute a significant portion of telecom revenue to the two fixed-line operators," said Lu Guoying, general manager of the telecommunications and network research department of CCID Consulting Co Ltd.
He said at a 2003 China Telecom Market Annual Forum in Beijing being held by the research house, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, that subscribers to Little Smart will grow from last year's 11 million to 24 million in 2003.
Little Smart, also called personal access system (PAS), functions both as a digital cordless phone indoors and a cellular phone outdoors.
Lu pointed out that the demand for cheap mobile phone services from subscribers and the replacement of fixed-line telephone services by China Telecom and China Netcom are the two big factors fuelling the success of Little Smart.
Mobile phone subscribers pay about 0.4 yuan (5 US cents) per minute for both making and receiving a call, but it only costs Little Smart subscribers 0.2 yuan (2.5 US cents) to make outgoing calls and nothing to receive calls.
Little Smart subscribers already account for one fifth of the two fixed-line giants' new customers, according to Lu.
He predicted that Little Smart will gain 8 million new subscribers next year and the system will add another 7 million users by 2005.
The analyst believes that with the second largest Chinese mobile carrier China Unicom's aggressive marketing measures and the launch of the 2.5-generation CDMA (code division multiple access) 1X network on Friday, CDMA subscribers will almost triple this year.
(China Daily March 31, 2003)
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