General manager Kuladist Smuthkochorn said yesterday that in line with these sales units, DPC was looking at revenues of Bt13.5 billion and a market share of 45 per cent this year, up from Bt11 billion and 40 per cent last year.

DPC is a subsidiary of the country's largest cellular operator, Advanced Info Service. As of the third quarter, it had sold 2.8 million handsets for the year, about 311,000 units a month on average.

Nokia handsets accounted for 70 per cent of sales as of the third quarter, with the rest shared between Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, BenQ-Siemens and DPC's in-house MFA brand.

"Sales growth this year is being driven by heavy competition among the cellular operators to sign new customers," said Kuladist, predicting total handset sales in Thailand would reach 7.4 million units this year, of which 65 per cent would be contributed by those replacing existing handsets.

"The figure is expected to reach 7.8 million handsets next year, and we believe we can maintain our 45-per-cent market share next year," he said.

Despite the increase in sales, DPC's profit margin has dropped to 2 per cent this year, from 3 per cent last year.

Kuladist said the margin was expected to be 1-2 per cent next year.

"Because of this, we've tried to cut costs and bundle value-added content into our products," he said.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation