ASIA : NEC Corporation announced that NEC Telecommunications (China) opened its first exclusive mobile phone retail store in Beijing on January 12th.

Ben Nakamura, NEC's Senior Vice President and member of the board commented at the opening ceremony: "China has the world's largest consumer population and we are sure that NEC Telecom China will continue to drive success in this largest telecommunications market."

In addition to this Beijing store, NEC Telecom China has also opened another exclusive store in Guangzhou selling NEC mobile phones exclusively. The company is planning to open 10 more exclusive stores by the end of 2005.

In August 2004, NEC Telecom China introduced a new branding platform "Get Personal" based on the brand essence of "Empowered by Innovation", to further expand its mobile business in China. "Get Personal" is a branding platform to create a unique, human and user-friendly image, showing NEC`s deeper level of communication with consumers by defining ourselves as a people company, which proactively reaches out to customers to gain knowledge about their needs in China. NEC Telecom China is aiming to position the company as the most creative, leading mobile solutions company in China.

Apart from NEC exclusive stores, the company will have opened 1200 branded retail outlets in 210 cities of China by the Chinese New Year (Mid February). It plans to open 1000 more of such branded outlets in the first half of 2005.

As a result of the ongoing branding campaign and other key business initiatives since the founding of the new NEC Telecommunications company, business is certainly picking up: (Source; SINO)
-NEC mobile phone brand awareness grew significantly from 56.1% to 63% in key cities and brand appreciation score increased from 34% to 50%;
-NEC mobile phone market share ranking rose up to No. 11 as of December of 2004 from the one of No. 23 in August, 2004.
-There was a record product shipment in the fourth quarter of 2004, which was over four times of the total shipment of the first quarter of 2004.

"Going forward, NEC Telecom China will continue to drive business growth. We plan to launch more than 30 new 2.5G products in 2005 and get fully prepared to enter into the 3G era in the China market. "Said Brian Lu, President of NEC Telecommunications (China).