China Greeted by 3G Boom

When people are getting accustomed to using their cellular phones to surf on Internet, the mobile service operators begin to eye on the smart phone.

At the beginning of December 2009, the Chinese mobile service operator China Mobile launched the cooperation with Canada-based RIM Inc. RIM’s knockout product, Blackberry smart phone will have the 3G international standard TD-SCDMA and 4G standard TD-LTE, which are both completely based on the independent intellectual property of China, applied in its platform. The representative of RIM also showed a sample phone based on the TD-SCDMA on the ceremony of launching the cooperation. Before that, another Chinese mobile service operator China Unicom cooperated with Apple Inc. and introduced the famous iPhone in China.

Blackberry fees may be lowered

The blackberry smart phone is world famous for its business- and email-related functions. By now more than 50 million units have been sold. Some film stars in Hollywood films and American president Obama are loyal fans to Blackberry smart phone. Actually, China Mobile introduced the Blackberry smart phone in 2006. But then it only provided group email sending for the foreign-funded companies and large-sized domestic-funded enterprises. In addition, the service cost 598 yuan (USD 87.59).

Wang Jianzhou, president of China Mobile, said that the company will provide services related with Blackberry for the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual customers. The fee will also be lowered. According to Gao Nianshu, general manager of Data Department, China Mobile, China Mobile’s Blackberry network service will be introduced in three phases. In the first phase the email sending service will be introduced. Then content-rich communication network application will be available in the second phase. This will contain the wireless network products China Mobile has introduced, including Feition, Mobile Application Store, 139 Email Box and so on. The third phase will be featured with the introduction of various business applications suitable for the SMEs.

Presently, there is a large price interval for the Blackberry smart phone in the market. While declaring the launch of the cooperation, China Mobile didn’t declare the detailed price of the Blackberry smart phones.

Big 3 engaged in smart phone together

Previously, China Unicom reached an exclusive agreement with Apple Inc. to sell iPhone. China Mobile then introduced a kind of mobile phone by the name of 3G-oPhone based on Google’s Android operating system. The two mobile service operators in China officially started to contest for more high-end customers. In addition, RIM will also launch the cooperation with China Telecom. It is said that both parties are still under negotiation. New 3G smart phones supporting CDMA2000EVD0 will come out in the market in the year of 2010 if everything is OK.

Presently, there have been several operating systems for mobile phones in China, including Serbian 600 for Nokia and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile for Motorola and Samsung.

Boom period for smart phones draws on

With the coming of 3G period, the mobile service operators have already moved their attention from the traditional field of communication fees to the different kinds of value-added businesses. Mobile music and video playing, mobile email box and so on will become the main profit sources for the mobile service operators in China. Therefore, the smart phone undoubtedly is the first choice of the operators. Compared with the non-smart phones, the smart phone’s biggest advantage is its extensibility, which enabled the customers to enjoy the operators’ value-added service anytime only by installing or upgrading the relevant mobile phone software.

With the smart operating system, the mobile phone can act like a computer. The functions of reading articles, playing videos, surfing on Internet and so on work with the high speed of 3G to make the smart phone become the biggest pie for the mobile service operators in China. According to the insiders, with the big three mobile service operators engaged in this field, China’s smart phone market will welcome its fastest growing period. The battle is coming!