Taipei, May 8, 2008 (CENS)--After posting a single-month increase of 10.16 million users in March, India saw its mobile phone user number amount to 261 million, making it the world`s second-largest mobile phone market, higher than the U.S.`s 258 million and only lower than China`s 575 million. This will benefit Taiwan`s High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), a world-caliber handset supplier who has been focusing on the market for some time.

HTC has worked with India`s Bharti Airtel Ltd., the largest telecom company of GSM (global system for mobile communications) service in the country, and Reliance Communications Ltd., the largest one of CDMA (code division multiple access) service, in an effort to build a customized supply chain of handsets in the market.

After cooperating with Bharti Airtel to promote its HTC Touch phones in India last year, HTC managed to sell 20,000 units of the models within only three months, and the product has kept enjoying hot sales in the market so far. On the other hand, HTC signed a contract with Reliance in March to jointly launch two new CDMA phones, namely P3000 and S720, which sell for RUB16,500 and RUB19,500 per unit, respectively.

According to market surveys, India had only 165 million users of mobile phone services in March 2007, and the figure sharply grew to 234 million at the end of the year. At the moment, Bharti Airtel is India`s largest telecom and GSM service company, with registered users numbering 61.98 million as of the end of March, followed by Reliance and Vodafone Essar with 45.79 million and 44.13 million registered users, respectively, in the market.

In the meantime, India`s state-owned telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) has actively procured base station devices for GSM services and successfully added 1.89 million persons to its user lists in March.

Besides, it`s noteworthy that India`s fixed-line telecommunication user number surged by 240,000 to 39.42 million in March. In other words, India has a total of 301 million users of telecommunication services so far, and may become the world`s major consumer market for mobile phones and supplying base of the products in the future.

(by Steve Chuang)