The Chinese market for mobile phones and personal computers are likely to grow larger than those in Japan in value for the first time this year according to a Nomura Research Institute, Japanese think tank. After the hardware, the value of the Chinese market will also go beyond Japan's for servers, storage and contents for mobile handsets by 2010.
The Chinese mobile phone market is expected to be worth 1.832 trillion yen ($16.8 billion) this year, up from 1.759 trillion yen in 2004. The figures compared with 1.823 trillion yen projected for Japan this year and 1.776 trillion yen last year. The Chinese mobile phone and PC markets have already surpassed those in Japan in terms of the numbers of units sold.
But on an individual level, Japanese Internet and mobile phone consumers spend as much as 10 times more than their Chinese counterparts.
The expansion of the Chinese IT market is likely to continue as its domestic consumer base grows and local firms offer inexpensive IT services to foreign firms. Last year China became Japan's biggest trading partner, with Japanese firms drawn to its vast pool of cheap labor and its emerging middle-class market.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005
