Factories struggle for survival

Hong Kong mobile phone manufacturers in Dongguan, Guangdong province, where half of the country's mobile phones are produced, are experiencing dramatic fluctuations. Their clients - major phone companies, such as Apple and Samsung - faced with fierce competition are making major changes. While some companies are thriving, many more may not survive. Michelle Fei reports.

To no one's surprise, two days before the latest smart phone, the Apple's iPhone 5, went on sale, people started queuing up in front of the Apple store near Central Park, in New York City.

On the other side of the Northern Hemisphere, Apple's number one rival, Samsung, announced that its most competitive product line Galaxy, will introduce its Galaxy Note II with quad-core processor ahead of schedule. It's expected to hit the market by Chinese Mid-Autumn Day. The fast track release is clearly intended as a countermove against the iPhone 5.

Manufacturers at Dongguan produce half of the country's mobile phone. (Photos provided to China Daily)

For Shan, a 21-year-old woman who works for a Hong Kong manufacturer in Dongguan, the fierce competition means longer working hours, standing on at assembly line. The company she works for is the major shell maker for Samsung's Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note.

She lifted her own very simple very basic cell phone to call home, to let her family know she'd be working overtime that night.

"We get busier when Samsung sells better and orders more shells. Even though it's busier for us, we feel lucky that our client is doing well in the industry. We know some are doing really badly," said Shan.

"It's much worse for my friend's situation. She works at a factory (producing components) for a less popular brand. They get fewer orders from the phone company. She has nothing to do but to waste time in the factory," said Shan.

The factory where Shan works experienced quite a boom over the last two years, with the orders for shells and related electronic molds from Samsung tripling. Samsung has become her company's major client.

"We've received many more orders from Samsung, and also other smart phone companies in recent years. But the most rapid growth we've seen was with Samsung," said a spokesperson for Hong Kong Chitwin Technology Group Company Limited's factory in Dongguan city.

"We've expanded our factory and improved our productivity to meet the rapidly-growing market demand," said the spokesperson. "Sometimes we even have had to tell our client to cut back on their orders, because we are getting too busy nowadays."

The white-and-blue colored office building of the Chitwin mold factory is situated in the Xin'an Industry Zone in Southern Dongguan city, about an hour's drive from Shenzhen.

Over 600 Hong Kong manufacturers have set up shop in Dongguan. The city has earned a longstanding reputation as "a vital pump along Hong Kong's manufacturing artery" stretching into the Pearl River Delta.

The factories are spread out over a wide array of manufacturing sectors: electrical appliances, electronics, critical components, molding and die-casting, according the Productivity (Dongguan) Consulting Cooperation Limited.

As the "floor of the world's factory", Guangdong province produced a record high 590 million mobile phones in 2011. That's 51.9 percent of the total mobile phone output for the entire country.

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