China, the world's biggest exporter of mobile phones, saw a 104.9 percent increase in the value of its mobile phone export, which stood at US$7.15 billion in the January-July period this year, the Ministry of Commerce said Monday.

The country exported 73.41 million handsets during the period, up 55.9 percent year on year, and 94 percent of the cell phones were exported by means of processing trade.

Producers of the exported handsets are mostly joint ventures with companies. Motorola, Siemens, Nokia and Ericsson accounted for 66 percent of GSM mobile phone units exported. Home-grown GSM mobile phone companies exported only 4 percent of the total GSM handsets.

China's cell phone exports cover 99 countries and regions worldwide. The United States, Hong Kong, Germany and Singapore are the four largest markets, occupying three quarters of the total export.

The rapid growth in cell phone export resulted in a surplus of US$6.3 billion in the seven months, up 270 percent over the same period last year.

Ministry officials attributed the surplus to China's increasing R&D capacity, which enabled domestic manufacturers to rely less on imports when they expanded their production capacity.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2004)