MyAdhan Blog

Link: Pakistan: Mobile imports decline by 9.18% during July-Jan 2008

The import of mobile phones went down by 8.18 percent in the first seven months of the current financial year. Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $440,976 million during July-January 2007- as compared with $480,265 million during the same period last year. According to the industry analysts, the reason of this decline in the mobile phone imports is the country’s political uncertainty. While on the other hand now a days due to the rapid increase of mobile phone theft people are preferring to buy low cost or second hand mobile sets. The government of Pakistan is contemplating offering incentives to the leading manufacturers of cellular mobile handsets and telecom equipment to consider manufacturing of cellular mobile handsets and other equipments in Pakistan where cheap labour and other inputs are easily available. In the current scenario the mobile phone manufacturers are not interested in investing huge amount in the country. During July 2007-January 2008, other telecom machineries worth $841,383 million were imported as against $761,609 million during the same period in July 2006– January 2007, depicting an increase of 10.47 percent. While, on the whole the telecom import registered an increase of 3.26 percent, as worth of $1,282,359 of mobile phone and telecom apparatus were imported during July 2007- January 2008 of the current fiscal year as compared with $1,241,874 during the same period in July 2006 - January 2007. A cellular phone retailer at Gulshan-e- Iqbal said the sale of used mobiles has gone up as people prefer to carry second hand mobile due to the increase in street crimes where mainly people are snatched their mobile phones on gun point.To compete with each other, mobile phone companies are reducing the rates of sets, boosting the trend of replacing old mobiles with new ones. Recently China Mobile is taking the lead and investing huge amount in advertising to compete with the other mobile phone operators.