Third Generation Mobile Phones Poised to Boom in China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, March 08, 2002

Third Generation Mobile Phones Poised to Boom in China

At the 4th China International Summit on CDMA Wireless Communications President of China Unicom said he was confident in the prospects of CDMA in China. China Unicom will achieve its objective of subscribing seven million CDMA users this year, he stressed, saying China Unicom is not going to massively expand the GSM service.

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China Unicom confident in prospects of CDMA

China will become the world's biggest market for third generation mobile phones, but the transition should be made soon at low cost and risk, an industry leader said on Thursday.

At the 4th China International Summit on CDMA Wireless Communications, Wang Jianzhou, president of China Unicom, the sole operator of CDMA in China, said he was confident in the prospects of CDMA in China.

China Unicom will achieve its objective of subscribing seven million CDMA users this year, he stressed, saying China Unicom is not going to massively expand the GSM service.

Wang stressed the importance of standardization of third generation on the smooth evolution from CDMA.

"Of course, we should learn the lessons and experience from our overseas friends," he added

Third generation technology developed

The third generation technology expands the multimedia capability of the mobile phone to include functions such as video message, multimedia e-mail, VOD and on-line banking.

Attracted by the alluring prospects of the new technology, Britain and Germany sold licenses at high prices. But some western countries have postponed the transition because of the uncertainty of the market and the immaturity of the technology.

According to Wang, a lack of CDMA handsets in the Chinese market will be resolved in the first half of this year and China Unicom would not lower their price, because currently "CDMA is catering to high income users."

A senior manager with Shenzhen-based ZTE said he was cautiously optimistic over the prospects of CDMA, urging the operators to take the lead in its development.

"On the one hand, CDMA operators have to provide a good service and this is the key to success. On the other, they have to coordinate relevant parties to define the market, so as to promote CDMA quickly at a low price and risk," he added.

Potential and risk of CDMA development

Xu Wenwei, vice president of Huawei, proposed that major operators could sell in batch some small services to value-added telecom runners, so as to further tap the potential of CDMA and reduce risk.

This suggestion appealed to some participants of the meeting. One said the purpose of his participation in the meeting is to find opportunities to serve as an agency for value-added services of CDMA1X.

The summit, sponsored by the China Institute of Telecommunications and Institute for International Research, attracted senior managers from influential telecom giants such as Motorola, Nortel Networks, Ericsson, Qualcomm, ZTE and Huawei.

Rapid development of CDMA of China Unicom

In the early days of January, 2002 we came to find China Unicom launch into the market its CDMA phone numbers and the users reached 15.15 million households in the first period while its final target is to aim at 51 million households three years later. In the meanwhile, China Unicom has also put in a surprisingly huge "bet" with its first term investment to reach RMB 12.1 billion-yuan while the long-term investment will be added to some 70 billion-yuan. >>details

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