The company is shooting to increase annual sales in the world's most populous nation to four billion dollars by 2005 and to double that figure by 2008, Hiroshi Shoda, chairman of Sony China was cited as saying by the China Daily.

"I'm very confident of achieving this goal," Shoda said, adding that in doing so the Chinese market would surpass Japan.

In order to achieve it, Shoda said Sony would accelerate investment, improve its designs and engineering.

The Japanese giant's total investment in China has surpassed eight billion dollars, which compares with a total of five billion dollars in 2001.

Sony has numerous operations throughout the country, including technology and manufacturing centres in the eastern cities of Shanghai and Wuxi, and an information systems centre in northeastern Dalian.

To strengthen local development it bought a majority stake in Chengdu Sobey Digital in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

Sony has an enacted a major restructuring plan as a faltering consumer electronics market saw company profits in the June quarter plunge 98 percent from the same period last year to 1.1 billion yen (9.3 million dollars).

SPACE.WIRE