As i mentioned in the last several weeks,China has been the biggest market of BMW 7 series.Now Bmw BMW expects a return to global sales growth in 2010, helped by emerging markets like China, after a difficult period last year, its head of sales said Monday.

DETROIT, Michigan — German automaker BMW expects a return to global sales growth in 2010, helped by emerging markets like China, after a difficult period last year, its head of sales said Monday.

“We see markets starting to recover,” Ian Robertson, head of sales and marketing, told reporters at the Detroit Auto Show.

“We believe there will be still a number of challenges around in 2010, but we are cautiously optimistic the industry will start to return to some growth,” adding that BMW is aiming for “single digit growth.”

Despite the industry woes last year, BMW “was able to expand its market share in the premium segment once again,” he said, “and maintain its position as the world’s leading supplier of premium vehicles.”

Robertson’s comments came after the automaker which owns the BMW, Rolls-Royce and Mini brands reported a 10.4 percent drop in global sales for 2009, for a total of 1.29 million vehicles.

“Faced with the overall economic crisis, we are quite satisfied with these figures,” he said. “We had to absorb somewhat larger decreases in volumes in the first half of 2009 — as all other manufacturers did. However, in the second half we reversed that trend.”

The weak performance was offset in part by growth in emerging markets, with sales in China up 37.5 percent, while those in Brazil were up 119 percent and India sales grew 24 percent.

“China will be a strong market for us” in 2010, said Robertson

In Germany, where sales fell 9.4 percent last year, Robertson said he sees “a significant downturn” due to the end of scrappage incentives in the country.

Robertson, who unveiled the all-terrain Mini Beachcomber concept car, said the company will continue to expand in the small car segment, which is growing.

He said BMW would expand is output of Mini in the United States, citing its success with American consumers. The BMW brand will launch its new 5 series vehicles in March.

“We have been investing one billion US dollars in the growth and expansion of our business here,” Robertson said.

“We announced last fall that we will invest a further 1.5 billion US dollars in our plants in Germany up to the end of 2010 and around 840 million US dollars in China for the expansion of our Shenyang production facilities.”

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