T&A Aims to Sell 700k Alcatel Handsets This Year

China's T&A, which manufactures mobile handsets of French telecoms equipment provider Alcatel-Lucent, aims to sell 700,000 GSM phones or 2% of the replacement handset market in Brazil in 2007, newspaper Gazeta Mercantil reported T&A Brasil's president Eduardo Chacon as saying.

T&A, a subsidiary of Chinese group TCL, is targeting the Brazilian replacement handset market, which is expected to hit 33mn this year compared to 26mn in 2006 and 20mn in 2005, the newspaper reported.

T&A expects to be selling 4mn Alcatel-Lucent handsets a year in Brazil by 2010.

Alcatel merged in 2006 with US network infrastructure supplier Lucent to create Alcatel-Lucent and announced investments of US$80mn in its Brazilian operations.

Although the components will be imported from China, US communications software developer Flextronics will assemble the handsets at its factory in São Paulo state.

T&A will initially sell two models, an MP3 model and another more sophisticated version for around 350 reais (US$173) each.

Three other models will be launched in September and two in November, according to Chacon."

Posted to the site on 10th April 2007