The world’s biggest and best-known sellers of mobile telephones face cutthroat competition in China. The market share of local vendors, such as TCL and Ningbo Bird, has jumped from 5 percent of all units in 1999 to nearly 40 percent in 2003, with upward of 50 percent growth in 2003 alone (exhibit). These gains have come largely at the expense of multinational corporations. To slow the penetration of local players, a McKinsey study suggests, global branded handset makers should consider outsourcing the design of some products to original-design manufacturers (ODMs) in Taiwan and South Korea. In this way, foreign manufacturers could cut their costs, increase their revenues, and more quickly market the models that Chinese consumers really want.

In addition to designing products for other companies, ODMs frequently manufacture goods for customers that then affix their own brand names. This one-stop offering distinguishes such ODMs from electronics-manufacturing service companies such as Solectron and Flextronics, which either don’t undertake design or have only started to build these capabilities. Global mobile-phone makers currently avail themselves of both kinds of outsourcers to varying degrees. While the use of ODMs may be relatively new for the mobile-handset industry, these companies currently manufacture more than half of all notebook computers in the world.

Many foreign handset manufacturers, relying largely on models they sell in other markets, have limited R&D staffs in China. This one-size-fits-all approach increasingly puts such companies at a disadvantage to local ones, which have their own R&D talent and can quickly design phones tailored to specific customer segments. In China, 60 percent of all handsets are "clamshell" units, for example, but many foreign producers don’t offer this type of mobile phone, which isn’t as popular in their home markets. Local manufacturers also have the specialized skills to design phones capable of entering thousands of different Chinese characters in text messages, even on small handsets. We found that ODMs can help global giants take on their local competitors—and improve their time to market—because ODMs are more familiar with the language and tastes of Chinese consumers and have the requisite engineering talent.

Reducing the time it takes for products to reach consumers is crucial: we believe that getting a model with cool new features to market 6 months before competitors do could increase the revenue it generates by up to 30 percent. Take the experience of a major mobile-handset brand. The price of six of its new models, launched in China in 2002, fell by as much as 43 percent within 6 months. After 12 months, amid ferocious competition, prices dropped again, by up to 28 percent. A global manufacturer that typically sells 100,000 units of a new model at 2,000 renminbi ($241) each could generate as much as an additional 30 million renminbi in revenues by selling it 6 months before competitors brought out a similar product and the price decline kicked in.

Global players that outsource the design and production of their handsets to ODMs could cut their unit costs by 10 to 15 percent, we estimate, assuming a minimum order of one million units per model. About two-thirds of the savings would come from lower R&D costs: engineers in South Korea and Taiwan receive only 15 to 30 percent of what their US or European counterparts earn. In addition, the lower procurement costs that ODMs enjoy allow them to pass on additional savings of 4 to 5 percent to foreign customers. Several major ODMs are also completing the transfer of their manufacturing facilities to China, so outsourcing to ODMs should become even more compelling.

Although ODMs offer their clients marketing and cost advantages, they have their limitations. The mobile-handset industry uses several operating systems and central processing units. Since ODMs have to spread their design resources across a range of technologies, they can’t be on the cutting edge in every facet of production. Furthermore, ODMs routinely serve competing global players, so ideas developed for one customer could be applied to the products of another. Thus foreign handset companies must choose carefully which parts of their Chinese product lines to outsource. They could benefit by continuing to design in-house the small but rapidly growing and profitable high-end segment, with models offering features such as video and electronic-payment systems.