ZTE cellphone sales to rise

ZTE Corp's mobile phone sales are projected to surge 60 percent in 2008 as the world's sixth-biggest handset maker aims to "significantly" lift sales of its own brand, a Shanghai Daily report said.

The firm last year sold 31.06 million phones globally and expects to sell more than 50 million units this year, says Gu Yongchen, general director of ZTE's corporate branding and communications department.

"We can achieve the target through deep cooperation with carriers and improved designs (of our phones)," Gu said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the largest annual telecommunications industry gathering.

ZTE started its handset business as a contract manufacturer, providing phones for the world's top carriers like Vodafone and China Mobile.

The Shenzhen-listed firm aims to establish its brand in the middle- and even high-end market, growing beyond the present entry-level segment, industry insiders say.

In 2007, about 46 percent of phones sold by ZTE carried its brand name and the figure will increase this year, Gu said.

Local innovation lacking

Although China's research and development (R&D) spending has risen dramatically in recent years, the country still suffers from a lack of local innovation, an official from the Chinese Science and Technology Ministry said recently.

At a conference in The Hague late last month, Zhang Weixing, deputy director general of the ministry's Torch Hi-Tech Industrial Development Center, said China is working to integrate science and technology with industry to stimulate further development.

China's R&D expenditures at $37.7 billion in 2006, was the fifth-largest in the world after the United States, Japan, Germany and France. Zhang said the value of China's R&D had more than doubled in the past decade to 1.4 percent of its GDP in 2006, when invention patent applications totaled 210,000, the fourth-largest in the world.

But more than 40 percent of these applications came from foreign companies, he said.

China's overall capacity for sustainable innovation is still low and the intensity of R&D in the hi-tech industry is much lower than that of developed countries, he said, as China lacks core technologies and is highly dependent on foreign input.

Brand infringement in Chile

Chinese famous brands have been preemptively registered in Chile in recent years, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, which notes that Chile has not signed international trademark treaties such as the Madrid Protocol, so famous Chinese brands cannot receive effective protection in the country.

According to Chilean laws, if the registration is successful, the infringers can actually own all relevant rights about a trademark, including manufacturing, selling, import and export, which harm China's brands with independent intellectual property rights.

The ministry suggests that Chinese enterprises intending to market their products in Chile register their trademarks first to avoid losses.

Beijing hi-tech up 20 percent

The added value of hi-tech industries in Beijing exceeded 180 billion yuan last year, an increase of 20 percent. Nearly half of the State's major science and technology infrastructure is in the city, according to statistics from Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

As Beijing's hi-tech industry continued to develop last year, a high-end integrated circuit was put into production, software output passed the 100 billion yuan mark, the Zhongguancun Software Park was developed into a wireless broadband network park and traditional Chinese medicine entered the international market through patent licensing.

In addition, the commission invested a total of 14 million yuan last year in initiating a project for "Aids Prevention Strategies and Integrated Control". It is planned that in the next three years an aids prevention system will be in place using prevention measures, control strategies, scientific research, diagnosis and treatment.

Guangdong No 1 in patents

Guangdong province received 102,449 patent applications and granted 56,451 of them last year, the 13th year it topped the nation, a report from Guangdong Provincial Intellectual Property Office indicates.

Invention patent applications totaled 26,692, up 31.3 percent, the third consecutive year it was first in the nation. The patent applications filed by enterprises reached 42,701, of which the number of invention patent applications was 20,296.

The provincial property office said the reason for its success is that the structure of patent application process is more rational along with regional advantages for intellectual property.

(China Daily 02/25/2008 page9)

2013-07-17