The prospects of foreign investment in China ’ s mobile services market in the post - WTO era

China has opened up its telecommunication equipments market for nearly two decades and many equipment manufacturers generate most of the revenues form this market. With China’s imminent entry of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the foreign investors are eager to occupy the Chinese telecommunications services market, which is currently closed to foreign investments. To find a niche in this market, it is critical for the global investors to learn more about market and evaluate the investment attractiveness from the market structure. Therefore, the objective of this paper is aimed at providing a roadmap of the investment potentials by analyzing the mobile phone services market structure. The paper found that the permitted operators in the mobile services market in China would generate considerable profits because of its market structure. In the early post-WTO era, the Chinese state-owned operators would still be the biggest winner in its mobile services market. Therefore, the foreign investors should take advantage of the joint projects with the MII or invest in the state-owned firms directly. In addition, the international telecommunication players would have relative advantages than the investors in other industries. Utilizing their domain knowledge and cost saving advantages to cooperate with the state-own firms, those global telecommunication players would generate considerable revenues in the post-WTO era.