China witnessed a significant slowdown in mobile phone production in the first quarter of this year, as a result of the ongoing upgrading of product build-up.

The Ministry of Industry and Information said on Tuesday that between January and March, 141.29 million mobile phones were produced, a growth of 6.7 percent on the same period of last year. But the growth rate was 27.8 percentage points lower than the year-earlier level.

Motorola, a major producer which has operations in northern and eastern China, was said to be largely behind to the production decline in Tianjin, a municipality in north China, and in Zhejiang, an eastern province.

Tianjin recorded 19.8 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion) in revenues on mobile phone production in the first three months, down 5.2 billion yuan, or 20.8 percent. Zhejiang's revenue on mobile phone manufacturing was 7.46 billion yuan, down 6.4 billion yuan, or 46.2 percent.

In 2007, China produced 548 million mobile phones. There are now in the nation more than 500 million mobile phone users.

(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2008)