"Vanity is my favourite sin," declares Bird, China�s largest brand of mobile phone handsets that entered the Indian market through its Hong Kong-based export arm, Bird International. Ranked sixth among GSM handset marketers in India with a volume share of about 3-4 per cent (of the lagal handset market), Bird hopes to be among the top four brands in the country by 2005. To achieve this target the company has identified class B and C markets to push sales and drive growth.

Bird was founded in 1992 as a pager manufacturing company in Ningbo, China. When pagers went out of fashion, it started making mobile phones. In 1999, when the first handsets were rolled off its production line in China, Bird had still not obtained a government licence to sell mobile phones. It was then that the company decided to tie up with Ningbo Electronics Communications Group, a company that had a licence but no cellphones. Thus formed, Ningbo Bird became the biggest supplier of mobile handsets, ahead of Motorola, in China last year. ... more