After flooding the UAE with cheap watches and toys, China is launching a fresh blitz to capture a share of the lucrative mobile phone market.

The Asian giant appears to be buoyed by the strong appetite for its products in the region as they are much cheaper.

In just a few years, Chinese toys and watches have become the hallmark of local markets that had long been dominated by Japan and the West.

Chinese mobile phones seem to be making an even quicker advance despite tough resistance from such mobile telephone heavyweights as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel.

Two major Chinese phone brands, Bird and Haier, are spearheading that advance, which is again backed by their competitive price edge.

"To be honest, Chinese mobile phones are of a very good quality although they are much cheaper than other mobile phones. The price of some of them is as low as a quarter of the price of some known mobile phone brands," said Hussein Farisi, an Iranian mobile phone dealer in Dubai.

"We started to hear about Chinese mobile phones only in the past few months. A year ago, I did not even think China makes mobiles. There are large quantities in the market now and there is a strong demand for them, especially by foreign dealers from Africa and some Asian countries."

Haier made its debut in the UAE with its famous pen phone but it has joined other leading mobile makers in producing coloured camera mobiles.

Bird, one of the biggest mobile phone producers in the world in terms of size, has also stepped up a marketing drive with the supply of colour phones, which are as cheap as one-third the price of a normal colour Nokia mobile.

Traders expect other mobile phone producers in China, the world's largest mobile phone market, to storm the UAE and other regional countries to take advantage of a sharp market growth.

China is specifically targeting Dubai, the region's main commercial hub, in its mobile phone export offensive aimed at penetrating a vast Asian and African market of more than one billion consumers.

More than 100,000 Chinese mobile handsets have been exported to Dubai over the past 15 months but most of them have been re-exported to other Gulf and Arab countries, Africa, Asia and Europe.

"China is a newcomer to the mobile phone market here but it is so far banking on growth in other markets, not in the local market," said Ali Makari, a Yemeni phone dealer.

"Its products are becoming widespread very fast but I think it needs to have agents based here as other brands do. Without such agents, its marketing drive will not be strong."

Although their market share in the UAE and other Gulf states is negligible compared with Nokia's more than 70 per cent, Chinese mobile handsets are gaining ground in the country's phone re-exports.

But dealers believe their local market share in the UAE and neighbouring Gulf countries will grow steadily in the future given their cheaper prices and good quality as well as a rapid growth in such a market in the region.

At home, Chinese mobile phone makers have reported bid advances in their counter-attack against foreign producers.

From a negligible share three years ago, Chinese brands captured about 30 per cent of the country's market of more than 100 million mobile handsets in 2002.

According to independent forecasts in Beijing, their share was expected to have surpassed 50 per cent last year. "Chinese brands are becoming the mainstream products in the mobile phone market," said the study.

Its figures showed China's mobile phone exports exceeded 50 million last year while total production peaked at nearly 120 million handsets.

The surge in China's exports of watches, toys, electronics and other products has turned it into one of the top trading partners of the UAE after its sales were a fraction of the local market potential 15 years ago.

Official figures showed China's exports to the UAE hit a record $3.4 billion in 2002 and were expected to have hit another record last year. Two-way trade between the two countries was as high as $3.9 billion, nearly 10 per cent of the UAE's total non-oil commercial exchange.

With a market size approaching three million mobile handsets this year, China is expected to push deeper into the UAE and other Gulf markets, capitalising on Dubai's status as the region's transshipment centre and supported by its higher output and lower production costs.

"As we see Chinese watches and toys everywhere now, the day when we start seeing Chinese mobiles everywhere is not far away," said Farisi.