The Chinese are a big presence in the gleaming glass and steel stalls at September’s bustling Futurecom expo in São Paulo. “We just want to sell a lot of phones. We don’t want to take them back to our country,” says Vicky Zhong from Shenzen company Kimfly Technology, in front of a pile of gleaming 3G handsets. “South America is our main market. The past two years is growing here in Brazil.”

There are 164m handsets in Brazil – for a population of 191m – up from 150m in 2008 - and more people have mobile phones than bank accounts: 86 out of 100 people now have a mobile phone. Improved economic conditions, social status and operator competition have driven the market.