Marketing Intelligence- Eight of 10 DVD players will be made in

Industry giants like Thomson, Sony, Philips and Apex Digital are manufacturing their DVD players in China. The biggest retailers in the United States, like Wal-Mart, Target, RadioShack and Kmart have strong sourcing divisions in China, and if they don't have an office there, they definitely are going there.

China's DVD sector has well over 400 exporters of the product, including 300-plus manufacturers. The bulk of output comes from the Dongguan-Huizhou-Shenzhen triangle in the southern province of Guangdong, which is home to at least 200 manufacturers of DVD players. The second largest production base is eastern China: Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Outside the two major centers, Mianyang in Sichuan, Dalian in Liaoning, Beijing—the nation's capital—and nearby Tianjin, and Fujian province—just across the strait from Taiwan—host heavyweight DVD player manufacturers.

The companies—a mixture of foreign-owned, Sino-foreign joint ventures, state-run and private enterprises—are consolidating around a core group of players, with a swarm of smaller companies catering to the rest of the global demand. These key manufacturers benefit from an easily accessible network of market-savvy providers of raw materials, components, metal-stamping and plastic injection services that have long served the nation's electronics industry.