Word: xu
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...company president and founder Xu Lihua risks becoming a victim of his own success. In January 2003 he opened two factories that can churn out 18 million phones a year, but since China, the world's largest mobile-phone market, already has 250 million users, growth is slowing down, and Xu knows that he needs to stay competitive. ("I have a dream that we will be as big as Motorola, IBM or Microsoft," Xu says...
...Xu and three colleagues originally founded Bird in 1992 to make pagers, but the company's real growth has come from catering to mainlanders' taste for cell phones with flashy color displays and clamshell cases. It's now a crowded market. There are 37 foreign and domestic manufacturers, which together can produce twice the number of phones currently sold in China annually. As inventories quadrupled in the first half of 2003, prices fell 20%, according to research firm IDC. Yet more companies are crowding in. Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecom-equipment maker, announced late last year that...
...Xu says Bird's strategy is simple: "I want to sell at the lowest price." But it is not quite so simple. As Bird moves outside China, it has to develop local know-how in each new foreign market. And Bird managers acknowledge that they're just starting to overcome the mainland's reputation for shoddy goods and build an international brand. Still, Xu says, "what Chinese manufacturers can do, foreign companies can't do"--and that's make cell phones that are both chic and unbeatably cheap. The phone wars have only just begun. --By Michael Schuman. With reporting...
...Staff writer Risheng Xu ’07 can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu...
...Staff writer Risheng Xu can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu...