According to Bangladesh's Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the number of subscribers of the country's six cell-phone operators -- Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel, Citycell, Teletalk -- at the end of August stood at 45.267 million, 27.694 million, 24.966 million, 7.969 million, 1. 338 million, and 2.117 million respectively.

Md Munir Hasan, Grameenphone's director for strategy and planning, said that handset price, like other developing markets, plays a vital role for any mobile operators to increase its subscriber base.

"Availability of low cost handset definitely has played an important role to increase the sub- base which otherwise would have not been possible," he said.

He said that competition from vendors actually forced the reputed brands to introduce low-cost handsets.

"So both the cheap handsets and the low-cost branded handsets have played significant role in increasing the mobile penetration in the country," Hasan said. Bangladesh currently imports about 18 to 20 million handsets every year. Over 10 percent of these sets are 3G-enabled.

As Bangladesh last month entered the third generation mobile broadband, industry leaders expect sales of about 300,000 3G- enabled mobile handsets every month in which China manufacturers have a good market share.