Biz Scene: Market

Fleet expansion

China Southern Airlines Co, the country's biggest carrier by fleet size, agreed to buy 10 Airbus SAS A330-200 aircraft as it adds more overseas routes.

The planes, due to be delivered from 2010, are valued at as much as $1.77 billion at list prices, the Guangzhou-based carrier said in a Hong Kong stock exchange statement.

China Southern, which flies about a third of the country's airline passengers, is adding at least 10 overseas routes before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Component orders

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, China's biggest chipmaker, won orders from Spansion Inc to make and sell mobile-phone components in the world's largest chip market.

As the world's largest maker of memory chips used to store programs on mobile phones, Spansion, based in Sunnyvale, California, will transfer so-called 65-nanometer technology to Semiconductor Manufacturing for production on 12-inch wafers, the Shanghai-based chipmaker said in a statement. The technology allows the Chinese company to produce smaller chips with more features at lower costs.

(China Daily 10/25/2007 page15)