Nearly 600 telecommunications companies from 24 countries and regions attended the exhibition in an effort to lure more customers from the rapidly growing Chinese market.

The show, which runs until Sunday, is also a platform for industry competitors to showcase their differing wares in the same forum as their rivals and hopefully grab the attention of today's ever choosy customers.

With China the world's biggest telecoms market and an oasis in the global telecoms down-turn, doing business with Chinese partners has become very attractive, said Zhang Chunjiang, deputy minister of the Ministry of Information Industry.

China's telecoms market has become very competitive, said Zhang, as has the show.

China Mobile and China Unicom, the two mobile telecom carriers, set up booths side by side and tried to persuade the visitors that their services will be better than that of the competitor's in the next-generation mobile communications.

China Netcom and China Telecom, the fixed-line carriers in the north and south respectively, told the visitors that they are planning to target each other's business sovereignty to encourage competitiveness.

China has 190 million mobile telephone users, but the mobile telephone penetration rate is not yet 15 per cent. The huge growth space will provide Samsung with numerous development opportunities, said Zhou Xiaoyang, president of Samsung (China)'s wireless business.

(China Daily October 30, 2002)