China's Biggest Cellphone Maker, Ningbo Bird, Plunges into Red

From The Standard: Cellphone giant plunges into red

"China's biggest cellphone maker, Ningbo Bird, warned it has slipped into the red, joining rival TCL Communication in the loss column amid cut-throat competition in their home market."

"China is the world's largest mobile market by subscribers, with about 350 million, and one of the largest for mobile-phone sales, with about 100 million handsets sold last year, according to various sources.

But it has also become one of the world's most competitive markets in recent years, as a group of home-grown companies led by Bird and TCL rose to take about half of the market in 2003 from a dominant group of multinationals led by Nokia, Motorola and Samsung Electronics.

Those multinationals have fought back in the last year, particularly at the low end of the market that had become a stronghold of the domestic players.
As a result, the foreign companies clawed back market share, controlling about 60 percent of the market last year, according to Gartner."