Kyocera Corp. has agreed to set up a joint venture to produce and market cellular phones with Zhenhua Technology Corp. of China.
Kyocera President Yasuo Nishiguchi and Chen Qingjie, chairman of Zhenhua Technology, based in Guizhou Province, signed the agreement in Beijing over the weekend.
The new company, Kyocera Zhenhua Communications Equipment, will be established in October and will begin full-scale production of CDMA-type mobile phone handsets in January. Kyocera will hold a 70 percent stake in the firm.
Initial annual production is set at 240,000 handsets, with the firms expecting to produce 1.58 million phones in 2006. During a news conference, Nishiguchi said: "Kyocera already has CDMA-phone production bases in Japan, the U.S. and South Korea. Our new firm in China allows us to supply CDMA handsets to the entire Asia-Pacific region."
At the end of July, China passed the United States in terms of mobile phone subscriptions, registering a total of 120.6 million subscribers. ,according to China's Information Industry Ministry.
The Chinese government expects this number to reach 260 million by the end of 2005.