US telecoms engineering firm Qualcomm has acknowledged the take-off of its CDMA technology in the massive Chinese market is falling short of targets.

China overtook the United States last summer as the country with the largest number of mobile phone subscribers in the world.

Its 120 million mobile phone users and prospects for rapid growth have made it a key target for Western telecoms firms.

Qualcomm has a tie-up with mobile phone operator China Unicom, which is trying to switch customers in 12 Chinese provinces onto a new network utilising CDMA technology developed by Qualcomm.

Distant goal

But despite a target of 7 million CDMA subscribers this year, China Unicom has so far signed up only 1.1 million to the network, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Handset, pricing and marketing problems are all behind the delay in take up for Qualcomm's CDMA technology standard, said Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm chairman and chief executive.

China Unicom is "certainly focused on trying to meet their own goal of seven million subscribers (this year)", Mr Jacobs said. "Clearly that's a difficult goal to meet."

Qualcomm expects the Chinese firm to achieve roughly half that number of subscribers.

"We've been estimating roughly three to four million" for this year, he said, adding that growth is "just beginning".

'Tough sell'

"They've managed to get the network in place fairly rapidly for such an extensive network. They've been tuning it up."

Handset supply and pricing has been a problem since the CDMA standard was launched in China in January, he said.

The Chinese authorities licensed 19 firms to make CDMA handsets, the majority of them local firms.

Existing Chinese mobile phone networks - including China Unicom's - use the rival GSM standard.

China Unicom has been "targeting high-end users, initially, and that's a tough sell" because "those people that currently are on GSM and move over to CDMA, they would typically have to change their telephone number since there's not number portability, so you need some special things to bring them over," said Mr Jacobs.

China's CDMA network has capacity for 15 million subscribers.

Most existing mobile networks in the country employ rival GSM technology, though Qualcomm's CDMA features in all China's options for third generation mobile networks.

China is in the midst of shaking up its telecoms market. The reorganisation includes a plan to issue two more nationwide mobile licences.

Earlier this year China Telecom, the country's dominant fixed line carrier, was split in two.