BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The market share enjoyed by home brands of China's mobile phone market has dropped to below 40 percent despite rising sales revenues.

    Nearly 25 million mobile phones were sold in the Chinese marketin the first quarter, up 15.3 percent from the previous year and the sales revenue also rose 8.8 percent to 36.83 billion yuan (4.6billion US dollars), said a report released by the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) on Monday.

    However, home brands continued their sad story of a reduced market share which hit a record low of 36.9 percent in the 2004-2005 period, the report said.

    The continuous slide has made it hard for domestic mobile phonemakers to fight back this year, said Jiang Lifeng, analyst with the CCID.

    The CCID report said the top five brands in China's mobile phone market in the first three months were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Bird and Lenovo. Nokia itself boasted more than a quarterof China's market and the country's No.1 brand Bird only held 7.71percent of the market share.

    Lenovo has become the second largest mobile phone manufacturer next to Bird with a market share of 7.04 percent. "Lenovo has great potentials for growth after its recent adjustment," said Jiang.

    Two old domestic brands of Kongka and TCL, however, dropped in the market share rankings.

    Following years of soaring growth, China's mobile phone market will now develop at a relatively lower speed. In the next two or three years, both domestic and foreign manufacturers will find it hard to increase their market share, Jiang said.

    He also predicted that competition in China's market would get more heated this year and manufacturers out of the top ten may face hard times ahead.

    The analyst said 2008 would be a dividing line when the number of mobile phone makers in China would be reduced greatly as a result of competition. Enditem