Chinese Tiger may bite Vodafone's bum

THE WORLD'S largest mobile network operator, China Mobile, has announced its intention to seek overseas acquisitions. That should worry Vodafone which is probably still the world's largest operator by revnues.

According to Marketwatch.com,China Mobile's chairman, Wang Jianzhou, says his parent company is still seeking to acquire mobile operators in emerging markets. That's exactly the markets where the major players - including Nokia - see revenues expanding.

Jianzhou was speaking as his company announced the final acquistion of Hong Kong's Peoples Telephone. Technically speaking, Hong Kong isn't an overseas territory any more.

China Mobile's revenues are circa $30.1 billion. The INQ isn't sure of the equivalent figure for Vodafone since it just sold its Japanese operation. Anyway, China Mobile has around 240 million subscribers - making it the largest single GSM network by far.

Nokia recently announced its 'Market Expansion Toolkit' which will let operators allocate a half-rate voice channel to low paying customers. The voice quality is poor but affordable by those in emerging markets.

Nokia also forecast that 80 per cent of the next 1 billion subscribers will come from emerging markets, including half a billion from China and Asia-Pacific. Vodafone just sold its Asia-Pacific springboard. Oops. µ