Mobile Phone Distribution Channel Structure in China

Abstract: China is the biggest mobile phone market in the world and the Chinese market is still growing fast every year. It raises significant question for the mobile phone manufacturers on how to better capture the opportunities in the booming Chinese market. Distribution channel is one of the major difficulties in front of both foreign and domestic manufacturers. Mobile phone industry is with no exception. Therefore I set out to study the channel structure of mobile phone in China. Two research questions are aimed to be answered: 1. What is the evolvement of mobile phone channel structure in China? 2. What could the future mobile phone channel structure look like? Based previous channel theories, I formulate a framework of Channel structure in terms of four dimensions-institutions, functions, conflicts and networks and channel structure’s interaction with channel strategy. Research question 1 was answered by using the framework for analysis. Based research question 1’s analysis, two future scenarios are proposed.