Pantech Mobile Phone Export $ 0.7 Billion

The Pantech, a mobile phone manufacturing company, signed a export contract totaling $0.7 billion (910 billion won), which is the biggest amount since the domestic company began to export the mobile phone.

The Pantech revealed yesterday its contract with the Motorola Co. to supply the mobile phones of $0.7 billion for one year.

This is the biggest contract for the single model made by the domestic company. The Pantech`s president Park Jung-Dae and the Motorola`s vice-president Pete Viohl exchanged the written contract with each other in the headquarters of the Motorola in Chicago yesterday. The Motorola plans to supply to the whole world roughly 5 million units of mobile phones, which the Pantech designs and manufactures.

With the new model aiming at the international market as well as the U.S. market, the Pantech plans to finish the development of the new models by the beginning of next year.

The Pantech`s new `cdma2000-1x’ model is the highly advanced tri-mode phone which is operated by Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system. It will be manufactured by the Original Design Manufacturing (ODM), and can support the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS-analog), Digital, and Personal Communication Service (PCS) together.

Park Byung-Yup, the Pantech`s vice president, told that ``since we will supply the phones of a single model for the total amount of contract of $0.7 billion, we expect the tremendous concomitant effect. By this contract, we will leap to become the world`s top mobile phone manufacturing company``.

Thus far, most foreign and domestic mobile phone companies, except for the Nokia and the Motorola, have maintained the single model production scale of 500,000-600,000 units. The mobile phone business circles anticipate that there will be a huge reduction of the production cost by the mass production, in case that the production demand will increase to million level.

The Pantech added that it can heighten the competitive edge of the product via the systematic and stable research and development, which was made possible by early contract with the affiliated Motorola for next year.

Park said that ``it is necessary to establish the strategy for the mass production of the popular model in order to attack the international market. With this strategy, we will advance to the international market such as the North America, the Central and South America, and China, as well as the domestic market``.

The Pantech aimed at the sales of 650 billion won and net profit of 30 billion won this year, but it anticipates that its sales will reach 1 trillion won by next year.

freewill@donga.com