Chinese consumers are set to spend more and more on electrical gadgets such as mobile phones.

Consumer spending on electronics has seen considerable growth in China, according to a report by marketing group GfK and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

Despite the ongoing economic downturn in many countries, coupled with the spiralling price of oil, the joint report, released on 4 July, paints an optimistic picture of the global Technical Consumer Equipment (TCE) market.

The 2008 forecast indicates a moderate growth of 9.4% – with most of that growth coming from Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The Chinese are expected to spend even more on items such as personal computers, mobile phones, flat screen televisions and cameras – coinciding with the Beijing Olympic Games in the latter half of the year – which could see them splashing out on new LCD TVs to watch the action.

The report suggests that China alone will represent 10% of the world’s TCE market this year, positioning itself second to the US, which currently holds 20% of the share. The Asia and Oceanic region together will grow by 16.5% in value, while mature markets such as North America and Western Europe will witness a slowdown.

In 2009, consumers have been estimated to spend $42 billion (£21bn) more on TCE than in 2008, and around 2009-2010, Chinese spending on technical consumer equipment is set to overtake that of western Europe.

The majority of the revenues in the global TCE market will be generated from mobile phone, LCD TV and laptop sales – in 2009, 1.4bn mobile phones and 137 million flat screen televisions will be sold across the world.

Another high-growth area is satellite navigation devices, and games consoles, with products such as the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 entering the market in recent years.

For more information, click here.