With China Mobile thought to be keen to launch its 4G network nationwide later this year, the behemoth telco is prepping its biggest ever city-wide 4G trial to start soon – this time in Shanghai.

But of the metrpolis’ 23 million inhabitants, only 5,000 Shanghai citizens will be selected to take part in China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) trial, which will begin on June 1st. The telco already has 700 outdoor TD-LTE base stations in place across the city, complemented by 300 indoor ones focused on transportation and business hubs. That should cover most of the sprawling city.

Shanghai-based testers will either make use of 4G-equipped smartphones or 4G mobile wifi dongles.

Sun Yun, the product manager of that telco’s local subsidiary, Shanghai Mobile, told Chinese tech blogs that while the company is not ready to reveal 4G tariffs for users, “4G rates will not be higher than for 3G, and they could be cheaper”.

China Mobile has been doing trials in smaller cities for the past couple of years.

Since China Mobile is using the country’s homegrown TD-LTE band, the carrier’s 4G network is not compatible with any current iPhone or iPad models. But TD-LTE will be rolled out by other carriers worldwide, so there will be more and more quality smartphones available that support the network in due course. Those include handsets from LG and Huawei, with Nokia, Samsung, and perhaps even Apple likely to support the protocol in future.

As we reported earlier this month, China Mobile will invest US$6.7 billion to build 200,000 4G base stations that will cover 344 Chinese cities this year. Though there’s no clear date from China’s tech ministry, MIIT, on a nationwide rollout, it seems that China Mobile is being given an unfair advantage and a head-start in rolling out its TD-LTE services; rivals China Unicom and China Telecom will likely not receive any permits for their FDD-LTE networks until months or possibly even a year after China Mobile.

(Source: New Business Daily – article in Chinese)

The source, who works at an unnamed telecom, says that among other reasons, China Mobile is not currently prepared to launch the network commercially, and is on pace to be ready for launch in October if nothing goes wrong. But the roll-out could come as late as early 2014, depending on how things develop over the summer and into the fall.

And those who’re waiting for FDD-LTE rather than China Mobile’s TD-LTE are likely to be waiting even longer. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is reportedly unlikely to issue any permits for FDD-LTE networks until months or possibly even a year after China Mobile’s TD-LTE network is launched, as it favors the home-grown TD-LTE technology.

While Southern Metropolis Daily is a pretty reliable paper, this is still just another anonymously-sourced rumor and should be taken with a grain of salt. Rumors about the launch of 4G in China have been flying for more than a year now, and at this point the most prudent response seems to be simply: we’ll believe it when we see it. That said, all signs do seem to point to 4G coming to China at some point before the end of this year if all goes smoothly.

(Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech)

Despite a lack of regulatory approval yet, the world’s biggest mobile telco by user-base, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) is said to be ready to make a massive final push to get the infrastructure in place to launch China’s first national 4G network later this year. According to informed sources cited by QQ Tech, China Mobile will invest RMB 41.7 billion (US$6.7 billion) to build 200,000 base stations that will cover 344 Chinese cities this year.

Regulatory approval is said to be announced on May 17th, with China Mobile hoping to switch on its nationwide 4G network this August.

China Mobile has been conducting extensive city-area 4G trials for over a year, most recently in the cities of Hangzhou and Wenzhou on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Whereas China Mobile will use the TD-LTE system for 4G (also known as TDD-LTE), rivals China Unicom and China Telecom will have FDD-LTE networks. But that means China Mobile’s network doesn’t work with any of Apple’s mobile devices, initially leaving the new service – as with the company’s homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G variant – devoid of support for iPhones or iPads (except basic calling, texting, and 2G of course).

China Mobile is rumored to have already selected eight companies to serve as initial network equipment partners, including Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens (Update: Corrected that they’re not providing handsets).

With relatively small numbers coming from 4G networks in nations like Japan and Singapore, one research group estimates there’ll only be about 72 million people on LTE networks in Asia by the end of this year. But China, pushing ahead faster than the previously anticipated 2014 launch, could bring a big bump to that number.

Across China’s three telcos, there are over 230 million subscribers on 3G (Update: Corrected this figure).

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

Specifically, a source told the paper that Li was taken from his home by police on the evening of April 27. While it’s not known what Li is being questioned about, it’s likely related to the apparent corruption case police have been pursuing since former China Mobile chairman Zhang Chunjiang was indicted back in 2010.

While Li has served as Guangzhou Mobile’s CEO since 2009, it is also possible that he’s being investigated for wrongdoing that predates his appointment to that position (he was the company’s marketing director from 2003 to 2009).

Of course no charges have been made public yet, and while China Business News is generally a reliable publication, one should always take anonymously-sourced stories with a few grains of salt. If China Mobile executives are guilty of corruption, it will be announced officially sooner or later. But the news of such high-profile detentions certainly doesn’t help the company, and I suspectit’s making other China Mobile executives who might have skeletons in their closets very nervous.

(China Business News via Sina Tech)

The move is the latest in a competitive battle between China’s major telecom companies to offer the lowest international roaming rates, and it has been excellent for consumers. For example, China Telecom calls from the US, South Korea, Singapore, or Taiwan to mainland Chinese numbers now cost just 0.99 RMB/minute ($0.15/minute). Of course, that’s still quite a bit more expensive than domestic calling rates, it is quite a bit cheaper than most international competitors. A similar international roaming call made with America’s Verizon Wireless, for example, costs $1.99/minute. In other words, China Telecom is more than ten times cheaper.

And the battle may not yet be over. China Mobile dropped its international roaming rates in February in a move to gain a competitive advantage, and Telecom’s latest price drop could trigger a response from either it or China Unicom. Here’s hoping it does; this kind of price war may be hell for the telecoms but it’s awesome for consumers!

(Beijing News via Sina Tech)

In the latest in a series of high-level executives at China Mobile being detained by authorities investigating an apparent corruption case, China Business News reports that according to sources at China Mobile, an executive at the company’s Tianjin subsidiary was detained by police on Tuesday. Sources say that four other employees nationwide were detained, but that the Tianjin Mobile executive was the highest-level employee taken by police on Tuesday. The other detentions were mid-level employees at Guangdong Mobile and Inner Mongolia Mobile, and one of the Guangdong Mobile managers has since returned to work, but the others apparently remain in police custody.

The detentions would seem to be an indication of continuing police investigations at China Mobile; investigations that came blazing into the public eye last February when former China Mobile vice-chairman was questioned for economic crimes. He subsequently resigned his position at China Mobile. China Mobile’s leadership apparently also expects the Tianjin executive to be gone for good; the China Business News cites sources as saying that internally the company is already making arrangements for finding a successor and redistributing the work.

The detentions come at a particularly bad time for China Mobile (not that there’s ever a good time to have your high-level executives detained by police), which is already facing slowing growth numbers, dropping calling and texting rates, and an increased threat from mobile web apps like WeChat that the company has thus far been unable to compete with.

(China Business News via Sina Tech)

China Mobile is China’s biggest telecom and has been one of the country’s fastest-growing state-owned enterprises. But the numbers coming out of the company over the past few months have made it clear that it and China’s other major telecoms face a grave threat from new mobile apps like WeChat. We already knew that Chinese people were texting less than they used to, and now it seems they’re calling less as well. With barely any profit growth over the past quarter and uses of its traditional services falling, China Mobile will likely have to up what it charges for internet services like 3G just to keep from posting losses. (That is, unless its own version of WeChat somehow takes off).

Interestingly, the company is still growing steadily by other measures; it picked up more than 26 million new 3G subscribers this quarter, for example. The problem is that it doesn’t make as much money from 3G subscribers using web services for calls and messaging as it would if those users were using traditional calling and texting. And as wifi becomes more common both in public places and in people’s homes, more and more 3G subscribers are actually using wifi to do a lot of their mobile chatting, which means that telecoms make no money off them at all.

So far, none of China’s telecoms have a good answer for how they can continue to flourish in a China where wifi is widespread and WeChat and services like it have taken the place of texting and calling.

(via Sina Tech, Image source)

On Thursday, China Mobile Research Institute president Huang Xiaoqing told a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald that what to do with WeChat should be left up to the market:

As to whether to charge [WeChat] money or not, this shouldn’t be a question for the government and telecom operators, nor for telecom operators and an internet company. It should be decided by the market [...] The consumer may not ultimately be willing to pay the price for the bandwidth [needed for WeChat]. But we have 800 numbers that people can call at no cost to themselves. In the future will there be something like an 800 number for data traffic? Perhaps that kind of product will appear in the future.

It certainly sounds like Huang thinks Tencent should be charged directly for WeChat’s bandwidth usage, although he hasn’t said that explicitly here. The idea of an 800-style free-to-consumers service for mobile data is also quite interesting, and a mouthwatering proposition for telecoms that at the moment are seeing social media and messaging apps pull more and more users away from paid services like texting.

(21st Century Business Herald via Sina Tech)

It took over three years to materialize, but finally it’s happened: China Mobile now has over 100 million 3G subscribers. The milestone is revealed in the newest China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) monthly data for February, showing that it has 104.49 million on its 3G service right now, up from 94.98 million in January.

Running an unusual, homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G network, the transition to 3G has always been a bit painful for China Mobile, its dominant position in the country during the 2G era slashed to the relatively tiny lead it has at present. Its much smaller nearest rival, China Unicom, has 83.48 million on 3G in its new February numbers; Unicom benefits greatly from supporting a lot more phones on its common W-CDMA 3G system, including Apple’s iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy SIII.

How about the next stage in mobile data? China currently has major city-wide trials in over a dozen areas, but there’s no set date on a nationwide roll-out. China’s tech ministry, MIIT, has indicated that 4G licenses might be issued later this year – but 2014 is still a more likely starting date.

China Mobile looks to be ahead of China Unicom in terms of LTE preparedness, so the tide could turn in favor of the world’s biggest telco once 3G begins to fade out in the years ahead. Authorities anticipate that there’ll be 60 million 4G subscribers in China by 2016.

Check out our graph of quarterly 3G growth in China in the past three years:

China 3G growth in past three years – click to enlarge.

According to Telecommunications Industry Net, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently held a closed meeting to discuss telecom operator subsidies to help the companies cope with the cost of Over-The-Top (OTT) services like Tencent’s WeChat. China Mobile and China Unicom reportedly both sent representatives to the meeting, but apparently were unable to agree on a path forward.

The dispute apparently centers around China Unicom’s concern that large subsidies would provide a greater benefit to China Mobile, increasing that company’s competitive advantage. With its relatively smaller network, China Unicom is less affected by the massive bandwidth WeChat users eat up, and apparently that’s enough reason for Unicom to be opposed to high subsidies.

In the long term, it remains to be seen how China’s regulators and telecom industry will handle WeChat’s growing user base and the bandwidth it eats up. In fairness to Tencent, WeChat is also probably driving some customers to upgrade to 3G wireless subscriptions so that they can do voice and video chat from anywhere, but even so, telecom operators will need to find a way to deal with the way that OTT services like WeChat leach customers away from their own more profitable telephone and SMS messaging services.

(Telecommunications Industry Net via Sina Tech, image source)

The folks over at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) sure know how to play hard to get. They hold all the keys to China’s 4G network dreams — without permits issued by MIIT, no company is allowed to operate a 4G network — but they have remained coy about when, exactly, they’re going to unlock the door so that China Mobile can sprint through it and start rolling out its TD LTE network.

Yesterday, MIIT Minister Miao Wei gave the latest in a long line of teases that this could finally be the year for 4G networks in China. Meeting with the Qinghai legislative delegation, the Minister said that 4G licenses could probably be issued this year. Of course, as usual, the key word there is probably. Miao also said that the domestic 4G network still needs more development both in terms of the network infrastructure that provides 4G service and also in terms of 4G handsets and other devices, which are quite thin on the ground in China (although that’s partially because MIIT doesn’t approve them).

Of course, the issuance of a 4G license this year doesn’t necessarily mean that 4G service will be commercially available in 2013. If MIIT does issue a license but waits until the end of the year, it’s possible China Mobile might not be able to launch its network nationwide until 2014. And of course, there’s still no guarantee MIIT will issue the network permits this year anyway.

Personally, I think I speak for everyone when I say: quit leading us on, MIIT! We all know you’re going to issue the permits sooner or later, so let’s just set a date and stick to that. Enough of this “maybe” and “probably” vagueness!

(People’s Daily via Sina Tech)

Many of China’s tech luminaries are gathered in Beijing for the Two Meetings, and that means they’re all talking to the press. Xu Long, a National People’s Congress rep and the CEO of China Mobile’s Guangzhou subsidiary, took to the airwaves himself yesterday and made a grim pronouncement for China’s mobile market: only 13.7 percent of Chinese mobile app developers are actually making a profit.

It’s not entirely clear where that number comes from, but Xu says the source is “an investigation” of the country’s million-plus mobile app developers. Xu says the low number of profitable developers is evidence that China needs to continue exploring healthy and sustainable models for developing the mobile market.

Despite that rather depressing number, Xu says he’s still quite optimistic about the future of the mobile marketplace in China. And, like the tech CEOs we talked about yesterday, he’s got proposals for how China can improve the marketplace, which center mostly on bolstering China’s broadband and wireless infrastructure as well as giving greater support to tech companies working in mobile.

(via Sina Tech)

It also seems like a pretty optimistic proposal for a nation that doesn’t even have a 4G network right now. But China Mobile has been waiting for years to roll out its TD-LTE network and has test stations in many major cities already. There are signs that Chinese authorities may permit the operation of a commercial TD-LTE network before the end of this year. If that happens — and it’s still definitely an if — that would give China Mobile’s network two full years to grow into that 60 million number.

But could the network grow fast enough? Assuming the network is launched late this year or early in 2014, China Mobile would need to average around 2.5 million new subscribers each month to hit the 60 million mark within two years. If we look at the company’s 3G growth numbers, that certainly seems possible; the company added more than seven million users this past January alone.

Ultimately, though, whether or not 4G catches on will likely depend as much on the pricing as anything else. China Mobile’s 4G plan in Hong Kong costs between HK$48 and HK$188 ($6-$24) per month, which is pretty affordable, but the plans for mainland China are likely to be priced differently, so we’ll have to wait and see.

China Mobile reports that it gained 7.05 million new 3G subscribers in January, pushing its total 3G user count to nearly 95 million. China Unicom picked up 3.67 million new 3G subscribers, bringing its total 3G users above 80 million. China Telecom just barely broke the 3 million mark with its new 3G users, which puts its latest 3G user count at just above 72 million.

That’s a lot of numbers, so here’s a chart with the telecoms’ total mobile subscriber numbers included for scale (yellow).

So, while China’s 3G industry is growing fast (keep in mind the red bar in the graph above represents just one month of growth), there’s still a long way to go. China still has fewer than 250 million 3G users, out of a total of well over one billion mobile subscribers.

(Source: Sina Tech, Sina Tech, and Sina Tech; image via China Daily)

Over the weekend, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) flipped the switch on massive new 4G trials in two Chinese cities. It means that residents in Hangzhou and Wenzhou, both in Zhejiang province on the outskirts of Shanghai, can now sign up for full TD-LTE services.

New 4G users in those cities will find that they won’t get high-speed data beyond the city limits, but it will be usable in other areas that have ongoing trials of the new network, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

For the Hangzhou 4G launch, China Mobile set up 2,400 4G base stations to cover 500 square kilometers, serving five million people in the prosperous lakeside city. China Mobile customers need to put down a 500 RMB (US$80) deposit to get in on the 4G trials, and they can then choose from some pretty affordable 4G data packages that are similar in price to the existing 3G plans around the country. The cheapest China Mobile 4G data package is 50 RMB ($8) for 2 gigabytes each month, right up to 500 RMB per month for 100G of data.

As well as promoting the 4G speeds of up to 100MBps in malls across the two cities, China Mobile has also transformed one Hangzhou city bus route into a “4G City Experience” fleet of buses, whereby anyone can sample the network’s speeds via wifi. We saw that same marketing ploy last year on buses in the southern city of Guangzhou.

China Mobile shows off a 4G-equipped car of the future. (Image: Techinasia.com)

4G for 2014?

There’s still no set date for a nationwide rollout of 4G. After many years of anticipation, it’s not likely that 2013 will be the year. After all, we’ve seen the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) say repeatedly that China’s big 4G push will not happen as quickly as people think, and that the initial emphasis is on getting more people onto existing 3G networks.

2014 seems much more likely, as voiced by the China Mobile vice-GM when he said he anticipates that his telco will have 100 TD-LTE handsets ready for customers to buy next year – and the iPhone will be one of them.

China currently has over 230 million 3G users (out of 1.1 billion mobile number subscribers), with China Mobile only marginally ahead of its much smaller rivals having been hampered for years by its unusual TD-SCDMA 3G network which cannot support any iPhone or iPad models. 4G is China Mobile’s chance to start afresh – and perhaps to dominate.

(Source: Xinhua – article in Chinese)

China has just reached 233.44 million 3G subscribers across its three mobile telcos. Digging back through the self-reported stats for each, I noticed that the end of 2009 is the earliest firm data point for all companies involved, so let’s take a look at three years of stunning 3G growth in China.

The newest numbers for 2012 Q4 show that China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) is up to 87.93 million on its 3G network, closely followed by China Unicom (NYSE:CHU; HKG:0762) with 76.46 million, and China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728) with 69.05 million. It’s all quite equal (see graph below), and growing at a steady rate.

It’s interesting that the iPhone is not visible as a bump in the charts, but instead it seems to have contributed to the strength of China Unicom (which is actually the country’s smallest mobile telco by overall subscriber numbers) in the long run, allowing it to punch above its weight and closely tail China Mobile in the 3G market.

Or perhaps that’s just down to China Unicom’s very common W-CDMA 3G network, which gives its users access to most of the hottest smartphones out there. In stark contrast, China Mobile’s homegrown TD-SCDMA standard doesn’t support any Apple devices, and relies on handset makers agreeing to make a TD-SCDMA device for the world’s biggest telco. Many big brands like HTC and Motorola have done that; Apple obviously hasn’t.

Many analysts are awaiting 4G hitting China. But that’s very unlikely to happen nationwide this year, as a series of city tests continue apace. 2014 is more likely for that. And so by this time next year, it’s conceivable that there’ll be half a million on 3G. Here’s how it has panned out in the past few years [1] in our chart:

Tim Cook spotted yesterday at an Apple reseller’s store in Beijing. (Image: @yang_0909 on Sina Weibo)

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Tim Cook arrived in Beijing two days ago for yet another trip to China, but since then he has been moving in mysterious ways. According to QQ Tech, one of China’s biggest IT news sites, Cook visited China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) HQ this morning to meet the new chairman Xi Guohua. The site claims that Cook’s social visit was confirmed by a China Mobile spokesperson.

[UPDATED 7 hours later: This is confirmed by Reuters just now. A China Mobile spokesperson told them: "In the morning, Apple's CEO Tim Cook visited China Mobile's headquarters. China Mobile's Chairman Xi Guohua and Tim Cook discussed matters of cooperation." Er, that's it].

It’s not clear what was discussed if Cook and Xi did indeed meet, but surely the talk will have covered a possible partnership. Currently, China Mobile, the world’s biggest telco, cannot carry the iPhone or iPad since its 3G network uses the unusual, homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G protocol, which no Apple devices support. While China Mobile has over 700 million subscribers, it’s not faring so well in the 3G stakes, in which it’s only marginally ahead of its much smaller rival, China Unicom. China has just over 200 million 3G subscribers in total.

If Apple will never support TD-SCDMA 3G, then China Mobile must wait for authorities to greenlight 4G going nationwide, which might happen later this year, but is much more likely to launch in 2014.

A trawl of Sina Weibo’s social search reveals no amateur paparazzi shots of Cook today. But yesterday he was spotted dropping into an Apple reseller (pictured above) in Beijing’s Chaoyang district. When Cook was Apple’s COO in mid-2011, he was spotted by a fast-snapping netizen as he strode through the foyer of the China Mobile HQ. If he was in the building again today, he did so with ninja stealth.

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

As a virtual telecom operator, private companies issued a license wouldn’t actually be in control of the hardware on the ground; rather they would be leasing the usage rights of it from one of the three state-owned firms. Even so, though, if approved, the regulation could radically change China’s telecommunications market and take a big chunk out of the big three’s market share. Perhaps that’s why China Mobile is already looking into alternative revenue streams, announcing plans to found an internet company and sell a line of branded mobile handsets.

MIIT’s proposed regulation is not yet a done deal; it is currently released in draft form for public comment and is not enforceable. Following the comment period, the Ministry will re-assess the regulation, and potentially even redraft it, before ultimately deciding to enact it or not. That said, regulations that make it into the public comment stage often are ultimately implemented, so there’s a good chance it could really be happening. If it does, look for internet companies (especially Tencent) to be hopping into the virtual telecom game as fast as they’re allowed to. For any company with strength in mobile apps, especially, the possibilites for vertical integration must be quite tantalizing.

(China News Network via Sina Tech, Image source)

In news that has got to be making some of the folks at China Mobile drool with anticipation, an MIIT report presented at a recent conference suggests that the regulatory agency may be planning to issue its first 4G network operator permit in 2013. While China Mobile already has a relatively developed 4G “test” network, it cannot actually offer access to the network to subscribers in mainland China until MIIT has issued it an operating permit. Now, it seems that after a long wait, that day may finally be coming.

The key word there, unfortunately, is may. The MIIT report does not say that it will actually issue any 4G network permits in 2013, just that it will “earnestly complete the preparatory work for LTE frequency distribution and license-granting.” In other words, MIIT will be prepared to issue 4G network permits, but whether not the Ministry actually will issue any in 2013 is less clear. It’s possible that China Mobile could have to wait until 2014 to roll out its TD-LTE service.

Still, the MIIT report signals that the Ministry may finally be satisfied enough with 3G growth to begin moving towards 4G. The rollout of China Mobile’s 4G network has been significantly delayed, analysts suggest, mostly because MIIT wanted to allow time for China’s 3G network market to grow and mature before allowing it to be replaced with 4G. But this was a strong year of growth for China’s 3G networks, and Chinese operators have been seeing 3-million-plus monthly user growth even in recent months. Next year could finally be the time for 4G. China Mobile is certainly hoping so.

[via Sina Tech]

As you can see, the company picked up just 3.8 million new users in November. That sounds impressive, but it’s China Mobile’s worst monthly performance since 2005. Of course, it’s still not bad by any stretch of the imagination — it’s actually still higher than China Unicom’s total new users in November — but it isn’t the kind of strong growth the company has been used to, and its new 3G user signups are still a little behind Unicom.

So, while November wasn’t a disaster for China Mobile, the company is probably hoping very much that it isn’t a trend, either. New user signups have already been nearly halved since this year’s high (5.96 million new users in February), and if they drop much lower, there really will be a big gap between China Mobile and its more 3G-friendly competitors.

[via Sina Tech]

Hong Kong’s 4G landscape will get a bit more inclusive tomorrow with the roll-out of China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) dual-mode 4G network. It adds support for the TD-LTE version of mobile data alongside the FDD LTE that the world’s biggest carrier launched in Hong Kong in April of this year.

This support for both 4G modes by China Mobile will be particularly useful for global business travelers. It’s apt that this is happening – claimed to be the first such dual, high-speed mobile network in Asia – in Hong Kong, which is a regional business hub. It’ll allow people with TD-LTE-equipped 4G phones, or those on dual-mode smartphones, to use China Mobile’s 4G network when in Hong Kong.

But it should be noted that the telco’s rollout is not complete in Hong Kong, and quite a few areas – such as the Tseung Kwan O and Kwun Tong subway lines – won’t be fully online until mid-2013. The company has 4G plans starting at HK$188 (US$24.50) per month for a mere 500MB of data, up to HK$398 ($51.30) for an unlimited-but-sorta-limited package.

China Mobile’s new dual 4G, which it calls “a seamless converged FDD LTE and TD-LTE network,” has been put in place in conjunction with telecoms giants Ericsson and ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063) – that was announced back in July of this year. Other major carriers are prepping such a 4G expansion in the region, with Korea’s SK Telecom and Japan’s Softbank thought to be implementing this as well.

Looking to the future, this added support for TD-LTE will be crucial to Hong Kong once mainland China sees a national rollout of 4G (which will be the TD-LTE band). But that’s some time away. Though there are some major, city-wide 4G trials going on in mainland China, authorities in Beijing are keen to establish 3G more fully first. At present, about 200 million Chinese phone owners are on 3G, but that’s not a great ratio of its billion-plus total phone subscribers.

[Sources: Netease Tech (article in Chinese), and China Mobile HK]

Boy, China Mobile CEO Li Yue is saying some interesting things these days! Just yesterday he announced that China Mobile will be producing its own line of mobile phones, and today he said at a conference that the company would be founding an internet company as a subsidiary.

China Mobile is a massive company that has numerous subsidiaries working in specialized fields like finance and international business, but it sounds like the internet subsidiary will be a little different. Li Yue said the company would be “set up like a startup [to] develop innovation” that will push the company in new directions. The way Li Yue speaks about this makes it sound kind of dramatic, but it’s not yet clear exactly what this company will do beyond, well, internet. It will definitely have something to do with the internet.

Once again, it’s worth noting that China Mobile is apparently looking to branch out in new directions, moving into both the mobile hardware and web industries. It will be interesting to see if the company is able to keep up with smaller less traditional companies and startups in those fields; needless to say, startups aren’t really a threat in the world of telecom service providers. But China Mobile certainly has the money to support these new endeavors more thoroughly than most startups could ever dream of, so I wouldn’t count the company out yet. China Mobile isn’t exactly known for innovation, but after taking a pretty harsh loss in 3G, it’s clear the company is hungry again, and these new projects certainly suggest the company isn’t going to be content just to sit around hoping that its 4G network is more successful (which it will be).

[via Sina Tech]

Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) brought the first Windows Phone 8 (WP8) device to China today with the launch of its Lumia 920T on the nation’s biggest telco, China Mobile. It becomes the first Microsoft WP device on China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), whose unique TD-SCDMA 3G network initially proved a turn-off for handset makers.

The Nokia Lumia 920T ships before the end of the year, and will cost 4,599 RMB (US$733) off-contract. The iconic phone – with a choice of black, white, yellow or red – should prove to be a boost for the WP platform in China, where smartphone owners overwhelmingly opt for Android or iOS.

In September of this year, China Mobile had nearly 40 percent of the country’s 202.18 million 3G subscribers, making it the leader by a not-too-great margin from China Unicom. But China Mobile has long struggled to get the hottest handsets due to its TD-SCDMA network, and is the only one of the nation’s three mobile telcos that can’t support the iPhone on 3G. But China Mobile president Li Yue was up to the task of polishing that turd:

Our close cooperation with Nokia is a key contributor to the success of China’s TD [ie: TD-SCDMA 3G] industry, and will further enhance the rapidly growing TD ecosystem. We are excited about this important next step in our partnership, and we look forward to creating an even more vibrant TD industry together.

In rough translation: We need more decent phones, so this is a huge relief.

The new Nokia Lumia 920T will come with some China Mobile crapware apps pre-installed, such as its service center app, and Fetion for group messaging.

Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop was in Guangzhou for the event in partnership with China Mobile. The Lumia 920 in its more conventional WCDMA trim is expected to come to China Unicom soon as well.

As for rivals, HTC will unveil the 8X and 8S tomorrow at an event in Beijing, taking the two WP8 phones to China Unicom and China Telecom.

[Source: TheNextWeb, and Nokia]

This morning, China Mobile CEO Li Yue announced that the telecom provider is planning to launch its own line of branded mobile phones. Li also said that the company will “definitely” continue and strengthen its work on a partnership with Apple to officially sell the iPhone. At present, China Mobile does not sell phones of its own, and it is China’s only major telecom provider not to offer the iPhone (although many China Mobile users do use jailbroken iPhones on the company’s 2G network).

If you’re excited about the Apple news, don’t be: Li’s statement is pretty vague and the company has previously said quite clearly that it won’t offer the iPhone until 2014. The news about a China Mobile-branded line of phones is more interesting, though. Li asserted that this would not harm competition in the mobile space and that China Mobile would pursue a “Wal-Mart” model of sorts, selling its own phones alongside the handsets of other brands in its stores.

That announcement, too, is a bit premature, as Li said the company is ramping up its plans but is still in negotiations with supplier factories. That process takes time, as does design, manufacturing, and marketing, so I wouldn’t expect to see China Mobile handsets sitting on store shelves any time too soon.

It’s also interesting that China Mobile is making a move into hardware around the same time as SARFT is making a move into China Mobile’s territory: telecommunications services. This is almost certainly a coincidence, but it’s a coincidence I think is worth noting. It will be interesting to see if any of China’s other telecom providers are considering similar approaches.

[via TechWeb]

Looking at 3G and total mobile subscribers for all three major carriers combined, (China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom), we can see that the total subscriber count sits at 1.08 billion, with the total 3G count at 202.18 million as of September. These are pretty staggering figures, as is always the case for China, but no patterns or trends really stand out.

[Download image version of chart]

But if we take 3G as a percentage of the total, we can get a better view of the rate of 3G adoption in the country. Looking way back in January 2011, 3G users accounted for just six percent of total subscribers. But now, 3G subscribers account for almost 19 percent of the whole. Still not a huge number compared to Japan or Korea, but growing at a solid clip.

[Download image version of chart]

Breaking this down even further to look at the rate of 3G adoption for each carrier, we can see that even though China Mobile (NYSE:CHL) dominates subscriber totals, it lags behind in 3G adoption, with China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728) and China Unicom (HKG:762) leading the way. So while China Mobile still has the most 3G users, the rate at which it is transitioning from 2G to 3G appears to be far slower than its competitors — both of whom, coincidentally, carry Apple’s iPhone.

[Download image version of chart]

China Mobile shows off a 4G-equipped car at a recent event (Image: Techinasia.com)

Phone-maker and telecoms firm ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063) might be reviled in the US, but it’s still loved by fellow Chinese companies. To prove that, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) has just awarded ZTE the contract to construct China Mobile’s 4G TD-LTE networks in five Chinese cities: Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shenyang.

According to ZTE’s announcement today, this new tender also means the company will produce 20,000 4G base stations for China Mobile during its slowly expanding test phase. That’s currently going on in 13 Chinese cities ahead of an expected national 4G launch in, according to China’s minister of industry and IT, 2014 or 2015.

ZTE beat out bidders from around the world for this major TD-LTE contract, such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, and its compatriot Huawei.

Authorities are taking the 4G rollout very slowly as it tackles the issue of slow uptake of 3G in China. Official stats from all three mobile telcos in the country reveal that there are just over 130 million 3G subscribers in the country, with more than 60 million of those on China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile telco. That’s a fairly big number, but it’s actually quite a small slice of China’s one billion mobile subscribers.

China Mobile might be the only mobile telco in China that will use the homegrown TD-LTE protocol for 4G, though that is not yet clear. China’s TD-LTE standard is being adopted outside of China – but if China Mobile is all alone in using TD-LTE in China, then it could face a re-run of its awkward lack of quality phones caused by it using the homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G standard. That has caused it to never get the official iPhone deal from Apple, and the iPhone does not support TD-SCDMA at all.

A teaser image from Qihoo of its quad-core phone, which will be unveiled tomorrow.

The Chinese software company and search engine Qihoo 360 (NYSE:QIHU) doesn’t want to let the upstart phone-maker Xiaomi get all the glory for making China’s cheapest quad-core smartphone – and so Qihoo is set to launch its own, for even cheaper, at an event tomorrow.

The quad-core Qihoo phone has already been teased in photos posted to social media by Qihoo CEO Zhou Hongyi (pictured above). And it has been priced at a rock-bottom 1,499 RMB (US$237) for what’s believed to be an unlocked device – that’s a good bit cheaper than Xiaomi’s upcoming Mi2 which has already been unveiled and will ship sometime next week for 1,999 RMB.

But Qihoo’s approach to its smartphones is quite different to Xiaomi’s. Qihoo doesn’t badge its phones and instead relies on its OEM partner – as seen with the company’s first Android-based smartphone, the dismally-named AK-47, which was manufactured by Huawei. And so the as yet unnamed Qihoo quad-core phone is made by a manufacturer that pretty much no-one has heard of before, called Deovo. It has a 1.5GHz Tegra 3 processor that has as many cores as cows have stomachs, and a 4.7-inch screen at 1280×720 resolution. It’ll run a fairly lightly customized version of Android 4.0, perhaps with a bunch of Qihoo’s apps pre-installed – such as its Android anti-virus apps and its mobile browser.

Other markings (pictured below) on the Qihoo device indicate that it’ll be a special for China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), the nation’s biggest mobile telco, and so it must be a TD-SCDMA 3G phone – and so not compatible on China’s other two networks, or pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Xiaomi has sold just over three million of its first-generation budget Android smartphone, so it’ll be a tough task for any other Chinese manufacturer to usurp that kind of pulling power. Nonetheless, these kinds of well-localized and very attractively priced China-brand smartphones really ought to be worrying the likes of HTC and Samsung.

[Source: Sina Tech; and more photos from CNbeta - articles in Chinese]

The Qihoo quad-core phone will actually carry Deovo and China Mobile logos (Image: CNbeta)

Beijing’s deadly floods this summer quickly became an avenue for criticism of the government when it claimed it would have been “impossible” to text a warning to the city’s more than 20 million residents in a timely fashion. China Mobile’s Guangdong subsidiary quickly proved this wrong by sending out more than 30 million warning texts about floods in that region shortly after the Beijing disaster, and now the company has come out and said that it has the capability to handle warnings in Beijing, too. In fact, Beijing Mobile (China Mobile’s Beijing subsidiary) Party secretary Tian Limin says that with the government’s permission the company is capable of sending out 25 million warning texts — enough to cover every Beijing resident — in under ten seconds.

The company is also planning to do more to improve service in low-service areas to ensure that when warning texts are sent out, everyone actually gets them. This involves installing mini signal “bases” in a lot of places, which has led to concerns among some residents that they are at risk from increased radiation. Tian, however, says that citizens need to disabuse themselves of the notion that these bases cause any radiation risk to humans.

The catch to China Mobile’s high-speed warning plan, of course, that it can’t warn anyone without the government’s permission and cooperation, which obviously it didn’t have when the flooding occurred this summer. The next time disaster strikes Beijing, the government is probably more likely to turn to telecom companies given the embarrassment caused by this summer’s failure. But it’s still a little disconcerting that even if Godzilla stomped his way past a China Mobile office, the company still couldn’t tell anyone about that until the folks in Zhongnanhai had signed off on it.

[via Sina Tech, Image source]

China looks set to adopt the worldwide NFC standard for contactless payments, in a move that could be a boost to the usage of smartphones for making cashless transactions in stores nationwide. The development came at a major e-banking summit in Beijing yesterday, where an official at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that the widely adopted 13.56MHz NFC protocol was the way to go. The PBoC acknowledged that other agencies need to approve this move first, and that it might be rubber-stamped by the end of 2012.

Uptake of NFC has been limited in most countries, held back by a lack of affordable smartphones that have an NFC chip inside, and the many and confusing forms of cashless payments there are out there. This year, a lot of big-selling phones came equipped with NFC – such as the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X (though not the iPhone 5) – thereby giving a larger potential user-base. NFC can be used to transfer data at very close range, and can be used to do anything from sending a contact card between two phones to using it to pay for a coffee by just tapping your phone against the special NFC receiver at some stores.

The Chinese payments platform Unionpay, the biggest Maestro-like banking alliance in the country, has been pursuing NFC payments for some time, and claims to have 1.2 million NFC-equipped payment terminals at stores across the country. Next it’ll be a question of getting people to trust it and then use it.

But it leaves the nation’s biggest mobile telco, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) in a quandary, as it has been pursuing 2.4GHz RFID-SIM contactless payments since 2009. However, China Mobile was hedging its bets all along, and has been prepping NFC as well with its recently-unveiled “China Mobile Wallet” service which will roll out soon. The nation’s other two telcos, China Unicom and China Telecom, also have an NFC strategy, including selling hardware add-ons for people whose phones don’t have an NFC chip inside.

[Source: Marbridge and China Mobile Labs]

Yesterday, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) head Miao Wei gave one of the most clear signals yet that 4G is not coming soon to China. In an interview in Beijing, Mr. Miao told reporters that the development of 4G networks should be accelerated, but he also said that MIIT would not be issuing the licenses needed to operate those networks commercially for at least another year and perhaps even longer. Thats actually fast compared to some predictions, but it’s disappointingly slow given that the technology is obviously ready to go now since it has been operating in Hong Kong for months.

The delay in issuing 4G permits is likely a move by China’s government to foster the development of domestic 3G networks, which have seen impressive growth over the past twelve months, before allowing them to be challenged by another network standard.

[ChinaNews via Sina Tech, Image via Shutterstock]

Apple’s new iPhone should be announced this Wednesday. The phone will likely support 4G TD-LTE networks, which means that it could work on China Mobile’s. But according to Sina Tech, numerous sources at the company all denied that China Mobile was even discussing the iPhone 5 internally.

That might come as a surprise to some, but readers with good memories may recall that back in July, China Mobile vice-GM Li Zhengmao said explicitly that China Mobile will not be getting the iPhone until 2014. Apparently, China Mobile is content to build its 4G network without what is likely to be one of the most popular 4G handsets, and Apple fans will just have to wait a couple more years to see their precious device on China Mobile.

Or, of course, they could just jailbreak it, which is what China Mobile subscribers have been doing with iPhones for years. Despite the fact that current-gen iPhones can’t access China Mobile’s 3G network, the company still has tens of millions of iPhone users who have jailbroken their phones so that their China Mobile cards will work in the device. It sounds like there’s no hope for a China Mobile iPhone 5, and probably not even a China Mobile iPhone 6, so it looks like people will have to keep jailbreaking for the foreseeable future.

[via Sina Tech]

China Mobile doesn't want to walk a lonely road this time around.

China Mobile has had a rough time in China’s 3G era. The company’s TD-SCDMA network has gone nowhere, and allowed competitors China Unicom and China Telecom to catch up as they racked up 3G subscribers China Mobile couldn’t attract. But China Mobile has been developing its proprietary 4G TD-LTE network and by all accounts it is looking fast. It could be a way to put the company way back out in front of its competitors again.

So it might come as a surprise that, according to a leaked memo and an anonymous source cited by Sina Tech, the company does not want to be the only operator of a 4G TD-LTE network in China. Rumor has it the company may be looking to China Telecom as a potential partner who could license its TD-LTE tech for Telecom’s own 4G network.

This might seem foolish because China Mobile pretty clearly has the best tech in the business right now when it comes to 4G. But it seems the company has learned a harsh lesson from its 3G failure, and would apparently prefer to make sure that TD-LTE catches on in China. That’s more likely to happen if there are two major carriers using the TD-LTE standard. And the adoption of TD-LTE as the standard in China would also make it more likely that overseas carriers might adopt the system, since mobile phone manufacturers will definitely be making TD-LTE capable phones if that become’s China’s 4G standard in an effort to capture China’s increasingly giant and lucrative mobile market.

Of course, whether or not China Telecom want to play along with this is another question entirely. China Telecom has made it pretty clear it isn’t that interested in 4G, and it hasn’t even applied to the government for a license to operate a 4G network. But as all three telecoms are state-owned and the market is closely regulated by the government, it’s possible that China Telecom could be (in essence) instructed to adopt TD-LTE for the sake of supporting the international adoption of the Chinese-developed TD-LTE standard instead of the competing FDD-LTE 4G standard. China Mobile’s internal memo makes an indirect reference to this, saying that it hopes telecoms will “share in the responsibility of developing and innovating China’s telecom networks, and become a great driving force for the industry.”

Bearing in mind this is all based on an anonymous source and a single leaked memo, it’s hard to say for now exactly what’s going to happen. But China’s telecom market could be in for a bit of a shake-up as the change to 4G gets closer. China Mobile, it seems, is willing to do almost anything to ensure that this time, its network standard doesn’t get left out.

[Via Sina Tech, Image Source]

Readers may recall iFlyTek from Xiaomi’s recent M2 announcement; iFlyTek’s voice-recognition technology is powering Xiaomi’s new Siri-like voice assistant. China Mobile clearly has similar plans, as it has also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with iFlyTek that will see the two companies working on a variety of voice-recognition including apparent integration with China Mobile’s upcoming cloud service. China Mobile has also appointed a dependent board member to iFlyTek’s board.

Voice recognition is clearly getting big in China, but any company attempting to serve the entire country faces a host of problems. China’s dialects and accents can vary quite widely by region, making speech recognition something of a nightmare. Although it’s easy to see what China Mobile may be getting out of this iFlyTek deal, and iFlyTek has quite obviously gotten an awful lot of money out of it, as China’s largest telecom, it’s likely that China Mobile can also offer iFlyTek speech samples and other data about its subscribers across the country that could help develop more effective speech recognition. I should make it clear: I have no idea whether or not China Mobile and iFlyTek are cooperating in that way to enhance the effectiveness of iFlyTek’s tech. But if they’re not, they probably should be.

Either way, we may see the first effects of this cooperation when China Mobile rolls out its cloud service later this year. What, exactly, it will look like isn’t yet clear, but if you enjoy talking to your phone, my guess is that when it comes out, you’re probably going to like it.

[via Sina Tech]

“With [the cloud service], even if your phone gets lost, it won’t have a catastrophic effect on your life,” said China Mobile data department deputy GM Shen Hongqun. According to Shen, users will be able to access their contact books, download apps, and delete information remotely via the cloud service. That last one, especially, should be a huge boon to users whose phones have been lost or stolen. I know my wife would have appreciated having it when her China Mobile phone was stolen at a Beijing restaurant last year.

The service isn’t just for China Mobile customers, though; it will apparently be available to all mobile internet users. That’s pretty cool and frankly rather unexpected news. With this kind of open approach and its apparently very fast 4G network, it seems like China Mobile is in a good position to gain back some of the ground it has lost these past few years by having a terrible 3G network.

[Beijing Daily via Sina Tech]

Do it for the kids!

We write a lot about telecoms like China Mobile (NYSE:CHL), but it’s rare I get to write a story as pleasant as this one: the company has pledged to donate 13.5 million RMB ($2.1 million) to children with congenital heart disease over the next two years. This program, based in Zhengzhou, Henan, is a continuation of a similar program China Mobile’s charitable foundation undertook in Inner Mongolia last year.

That program has already helped 377 impoverished children suffering from heart disease to receive treatment and provided free screenings for another 10,000. China Mobile volunteers also racked up more than a thousand hours of service in connection with the campaign, and this new Henan program aims to help even more children.

Now, it would be easy to call this a cynical PR strategy (it could be) or to say that China Mobile could afford to give more (it could). Obviously, since I just wrote both of those things, a part of me even feels that way. But that’s missing the point, I think. This is a capital-letters Good Thing and more Chinese companies should be doing things like this. China has no shortage of underprivileged children, and one of the advantages of being a profitable tech giant ought to be that you can use your powers to fight poverty and disease. Let me be very clear in my message to the CEOs of other tech companies that might be reading this article: do this. Do it for the kids, or do it for the PR bump, I don’t care. Just do it (or something like it). Charity is good.

So here’s to China Mobile! Your 3G network may be kind of a joke, but your heart is clearly in the right place. (And you’ve got that sweet 4G TD-LTE network coming soon, hopefully, so don’t feel too bad about what I just said about your 3G).

[via Sina Tech]

But China Mobile has a new CEO in Xi Guohua, and Xi is taking the company in the opposite direction. According to an article in China Business News, Xi’s strategic buzzword is “professional specialization,” and the CEO has been busy shifting the company from its current location-based configuration to a new approach that will see the company re-split into subsidiaries based on their specific missions.

It is, in a very real sense, the opposite of Wang’s “One China Mobile” policy because Xi apparently intends for these specialized groups with a relatively high degree of autonomy, focusing on their specific missions without much interference or intermingling with other parts of the company.

Xi will also create a subsidiary internet company during the second half of this year, as well as subsidiaries to focus specifically on mobile clients and on China Mobile’s international business. It’s not clear exactly how Xi plans to use the internet company — whether that refers to China Mobile’s operations as an ISP or something else entirely isn’t clear — but the company will have its own director, and employees will being peeled off local subsidiaries around the country to help staff the new company. Xi may be hoping to follow in the footsteps of China Telecom, which has seen success with internet subsidiaries like its Tianyi video service.

[China Business News via Sina Tech]

Taking cover from Vicente in Hong Kong (Kim Cheng, AP)

As China’s southeast deals with the aftermath of tropical storm/typhoon Vicente, Guangdong Mobile (the local division of China Mobile) has revealed that it sent 30 million warning texts about the storm to subscribers in five cities, in cooperation with the provincial government. Mobile users in Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, and Yunfu received reminders to be careful from the telecom company because those five cities were forecast to be most affected by the storm.

The news comes as Beijing’s government is being asked awkward questions about why it didn’t cooperate with telecom operators to warn mobile users about this past Saturday’s deadly rainstorm, which led to nearly forty deaths in the capital (and allegations that the real death toll might be much higher). As we reported yesterday, Beijing’s Meteorological Bureau claims it would have been impossible to send text message warnings to Beijing’s 20 million residents because its mass texting system is far too slow.

But China’s telecoms say that if the government had authorized them to send warning texts, there would have been no technological issues. All three major telecom providers in Beijing — China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom — have now announced publicly that they would have no technical problems sending warning text messages to their entire networks within a short period of time. However, as China Telecom said yesterday, the companies are not legally permitted to send messages like that without the authorization of the relevant government organs.

The Guangdong government’s successful cooperation with its local telecoms just days after Beijing’s rainpocalypse certainly throws the Beijing government’s failure to do into sharp relief, coming as it does while families are still burying victims of the storm and many Beijing denizens are dealing with severe damage to their homes and property. The rain, of course, was going to cause damage and take lives whether text messages were sent or not. But how many lives might have been saved? How many ruined cars might have been moved to higher ground?

It is painfully clear that Beijing’s failure to warn citizens of the danger by text message has nothing to do with “technical obstacles” and everything to do with a lack of cooperation (and perhaps a lack of interest in communication). This does a great disservice to the people of Beijing, who proved on Saturday that they can communicate and cooperate for the greater good even in the worst of times. Here’s hoping maybe the government will learn the lesson, and next time there’s a dangerous storm coming, they’ll give telecom operators a call.

So this morning I jumped down the rabbit hole of China’s 3G subscriber numbers, and plotted the monthly totals for each of the three major telecoms – China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom – since January of 2011. You can view them in the chart below [1].

[Download image version of chart]

While the numbers are pretty stunning for each, neither company appears to be running away from the others. Although China Mobile is currently the only carrier that doesn’t have an iPhone, so things could change if they strike a deal with Apple.

The figures look even more impressive when the three carriers are combined for a national total of 3G subscribers. Note that the total for 3G subscribers now stands at a whopping 175 million:

[Download image version of chart]

If you look at the monthly subscriber numbers and calculate a month-on-month growth rate [2] then we see that while still pretty impressive currently, it is tapering off a little since 2011. It will be interesting to watch if this changes as newer and more affordable smartphone offerings come to market though. This is not a market that I would expect to stall.

[Download image version of chart]

Moreover, 2G may not be quite as dead as everyone has been predicting; the company also picked up 380,000 new 2G subscribers in June. Not too shabby, that. In the release of June data last night, Unicom also noted that it had picked up 860,000 new broadband customers and 60,000 new dial-up accounts. Count that among the growing pile of evidence that China’s wired internet users are growing quickly, too, even if more Chinese users access the net via mobiles these days.

As 3G grows in China, China Mobile’s unpopular TD-SCDMA 3G network causes that company to lose ground to competitors Unicom and Telecom. China Mobile, however, is out in front with its 4G TD-LTE network, and could well dominate that market whenever it is finally allowed to make it commercially available.

[Securities Daily via Sina Tech]

ZTE has stated publicly that the numbers are a result of China’s big telecom operators (Specifically China Mobile and China Unicom) delaying invitations for cooperative bids and the closing of some deals until the second half of the fiscal year, meaning that the profits ZTE generated from similar deals last year didn’t make it into this year’s first half numbers.

Others have speculated there’s more to it than that, and predict layoffs within the year, although there doesn’t seem to be much to substantiate the layoff rumors just yet. It’s worth remembering, too, that ZTE is very international and was thus impacted more significantly by international financial troubles like the European financial crisis than most other Chinese tech firms.

But if ZTE is telling the truth about its flagging profits that also indicates a problem in a way: the firm is clearly heavily reliant on contracts with China’s major telecoms. As domestic smartphone makers increase exponentially, many of them with more appealing brands than ZTE, the company could find itself less appealing to big telecoms and boxed out of the contracts that clearly make up a big percentage of its current revenue stream.

The company recently announced a 4G smartphone, and is apparently banking on getting in on the ground floor as TD-LTE increases in popularity and (hopefully soon) becomes available to Chinese users.

[Sina Tech]

In fact, Li says, there will be at least one 4G phone available by the end of this year. Halfway through 2013, there should be at least ten TD-LTE phones available, and in 2014 there will be more than 100, including Apple’s iPhone. There should also be pretty decent service by then, as Li says the company will have 200,000 service bases set up by the beginning of 2013, and presumably hundreds of thousands more by 2014.

However, Li says this plan is still being approved by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). MIIT has been putting the brakes on China Mobile’s 4G plans for a while now, so there’s some reason to fear that MIIT may tell the company to slow down.

Even if the plan is approved, waiting two years for the iPhone probably isn’t what China Mobile customers wanted to hear (the current iPhone isn’t compatible with China Mobile’s 3G network). I suppose 2014 is better than never, but I can’t help feeling like if this is China Mobile’s plan — and MIIT may well slow the company down even further — China Telecom and China Unicom are probably breathing a sigh of relief that regardless of whatever new phone Apple releases, they don’t have to worry about a fast 4G competitor in China until at least 2014.

[Beijing News via Sina Tech]

Image via Wikipedia

China loves islands. In fact, China loves islands so much that it’s involved in disputes over them with a whole bunch of other countries at any given time. One of those disputed island chains is the Paracel Islands, a small island chain that has been administered by China since a 1974 battle in which scores of Chinese and Vietnamese sailors were killed before Vietnamese ships finally withdrew, fleeing Chinese naval reinforcements. China has controlled the islands ever since, but they are still claimed by both Vietnam and the Republic of Taiwan. (The battle was also dramatized in China with the popular 1976 film, Storm in the South Sea).

Aside from scattered military garrisons, it seems the islands are uninhabited, but according to a Shenzhen newspaper, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom all offer service there. In fact, China Mobile has recently unveiled 3G service on six of the islands in the chain. (The Sina Tech article does make vague reference to civilians living on the island, but the 2012 CIA World Factbook lists the islands as uninhabited aside from Chinese military personnel).

Whoever lives there, the telecom presence is probably quite welcomed, as the islands are tiny and don’t exactly offer all the comforts of home. Woody island, the most developed, features an airport, a post office, a hostel, a bank, and three roads. The others don’t even have that much, but thanks to Chinese telecoms, that’s not going to stop Chinese soldiers stationed there from posting to Weibo anymore.

Of course, the telecom services available on the Paracel islands won’t be much consolation to Vietnam or Taiwan. But realistically, China has a much bigger military than either of them, and the presence of all major telecoms there is proof enough it’s placing increased importance on the islands, which are surrounded by potential oil and gas reserves.

[via Sina Tech]

The ZTE U880 for China Mobile. (Image source: Zol.com.cn)

China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), as the world’s biggest mobile telco by subscriber figures, often demands dozens of phone makers do a little dance, and it selects a few of them to come back to its hotel room and engage in a bit of hardware cooperation. So to speak. It’s actually called the quarterly TD-SCDMA handset tender. And reports in the Chinese media suggest that the winners this time are ZTE, Haier, T-Smart, and Konka – all of which will produce one affordable 3G phone for China Mobile, with as many as six million perhaps being ordered in total this quarter.

That’s a lot of units to shift, making it a valuable boost to the (usually) local phone brands who take part and get selected. Lenovo didn’t make the cut this time round. ZTE has already done a lot for China Mobile’s 3G subscriber figures with the likes of its budget ZTE U880, also now as the ZTE Blade (pictured above). Haier is not well known as a phone brand, but has been pushing into mobile a lot more since last year. T-Smart and Konka, meanwhile, are much smaller gadget makers that might only be familiar to very low-budget phone buyers – Konka being notorious as a sometime maker of Nokia rip-offs, helped by the very Nokia-like font in its brand logo.

The same report suggests that Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum (NASDAQ:SPRD) will be a big winner in this new China Mobile order, with its TD-SCDMA budget chipset thought to be powering the four chosen handsets. Last year we looked at how Spreadtrum’s new ARM 9 600MHz processor would likely help all three of China’s telcos roll out made-to-order, low-price Android smartphones to boost their not-too-stellar rates of 3G adoption. Currently, up to 2012 Q1, China Mobile has 59.56 million on its TD-SCDMA 3G network, with China Unicom (using the more global WCDMA frequency) close behind on 48.86 million.

[Source: Sina Tech - article in Chinese]

According to Sina Tech, when the bus was parked the reporter was able to achieve blazingly fast download speeds: an average of 102.43 Mbps and a peak speed of 112.2 Mbps. To put things in perspective, that’s about 56 times faster than the ADSL connection I’m using to write this post. After the bus got moving, the speed dropped significantly, down to an average of about 40 Mbps with a peak speed of around 60 Mbps. That’s still pretty fast!

Now, will we be experiencing speeds like this when 4G networks finally come to China? Probably not. The reporter was testing the network on an empty bus; my guess is that the speed will take a major hit when millions of people are all trying to use it at the same time (although between then and now, China Mobile will also probably beef up infrastructure well beyond what’s being used for these tests). Still, the numbers are impressive and suggest that 4G will be a major step up. They also suggest that China Mobile is improving the TD-LTE network’s performance, as a similar test last year returned lower (though still quite fast) results.

[via Sina Tech]

There are several reasons for China Mobile’s uptake. One is that with the proliferation of phones that can hold multiple SIM cards, many mobile phone users in Pakistan are choosing multiple carriers. The company has also been doing a big marketing push there, offering special deals and improved services. It has also built a number of new bases and service centers, even in rural areas.

China Mobile’s Zong still trails behind local market leaders like Mobilink, Telenor, and Ufone, but it appears to be catching up.

[C114 via Sina Tech]

China Mobile

According to Li Yue, China Mobile’s monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) in the first quarter fell by three percent, and will be focusing its upcoming efforts on developments in new businesses, in order to offset the negative growth rates.

On development efforts of TD-LTE, China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua said it will be increasing the number of pilot-testing cities from six to ten. It also has 40 telecom operators committed on board for the development of TD-LTE 4G network.

According to Sina News, the cost of developing 4G is much cheaper than 3G. This would also mean with the development of the 4G network and rising popularity of smartphone usage in China, introduction of 4G network services will become the core contributing factor to China Mobile’s future profits. Li Yue also added that the company also has plans to build 20,000 4G base stations, and if all goes well, it is looking at having 200,000 4G base stations by the end of 2013.

Guohua added that China Mobile is looking to strengthen its partnership with Apple, and will be releasing new updates about their cooperative efforts soon.

[Source: Sina News - article in chinese]

Bigwigs testing 4G on the bus

Last we heard, 4G in China was still a long way off. Like, years off. But recently we’ve seen China Mobile ramp up testing of its 4G TD-LTE network domestically even as it launched 4G TD-LTE service in Hong Kong. The obstacle, domestically, has mostly been the lack of government support, but recently we’ve seen some signs the government is getting behind 4G TD-LTE.

1. Yesterday, MIIT’s Minister Encouraged TD-LTE to Compete Abroad.

TD-LTE is China’s home-grown 4G technology, and yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s director Miao Wei said that in addition to being the leading technology in China, TD-LTE should compete internationally with other 4G standards like LTE FDD. That doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on China, but it’s interesting to consider in concert with this…

2. Today, Reform and Development Committee Member Visits Hangzhou to Test 4G Service.

Today, Zhang Xiaoqiang, a member of China’s important Reform and Development Committee, visited Hangzhou with an official from China Mobile to test that company’s 4G TD-LTE service. The two tested the 4G service via WiFi installed on a public bus, and apparently, it went quite well.

3. Wireless Test Equipment is Selling Like Hotcakes.

According to analysis from Frost and Sullivan, demand for wireless test equipment in China is growing, in part because of “imminent” TD-LTE deployment.

Now, does any of this mean we’re getting 4G LTE later this month, or even later this year? I wouldn’t hold my breath. For one thing, very few people in China have 4G phones, and some increased government enthusiasm for the technology certainly doesn’t eliminate the need for permits and a lot of additional testing. But the fact that this sort of thing is even appearing in the news at all does indicate that MIIT and the Reform and Development Committee may be feeling more excited about 4G, and specifically China Mobile’s TD-LTE, than they once seemed to be. Testing of the system is clearly ramping up, and while it doesn’t mean we’re about to get 4G service, it might well be a sign that we may not have to wait as long as we originally thought.

[via Sina Tech, Sina Tech, and PR Newswire]

China Mobile (HKG:0941, NYSE:CHL) has lost a lot of ground thanks to its choice of TD-SCDMA for its 3G network, but the company is determined to be ahead of the pack when it comes to 4G. The company has been testing a 4G-LTE network in numerous locations around the country for some time now, and has even launched a 4G-LTE network in Hong Kong. Here on the mainland, though, no China Mobile users have yet gotten a chance to test the 4G tech.

That could change on May 17, when sources tell Sina Tech China Mobile will be launching an “open” test in Shenzhen. Granted, “open” is a bit of a misnomer, as the 4G network will only be available to a very small number of loyal local customers, but it will be the first time any regular users in mainland China have gotten their hands on 4G. China Mobile will even pay for the testers’ service, but it’s not going to all fun and games: those chosen to test the service will have to submit written reports about their experiences.

China Mobile has apparently set up more than 3,000 service stations in Shenzhen, so service there should be pretty strong. There are currently closed test programs in nine cities, but Hangzhou is reportedly the company’s other main testing location, so it’s possible Hangzhou customers could be the next to get their hands on 4G-LTE service. But it’s likely to be quite a while before China sees a 4G network that everyone can use; the Chinese government is intentionally delaying implementation of the technology to bolster growth in the domestic 3G market.

[via Sina Tech]

New 3G subscriber stats for China’s two largest mobile carriers show that China Unicom (NYSE:CHU; HKG:0762) is still making good progress, hitting a new milestone in its pursuit of China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), the world’s biggest telco by user numbers. For the first time ever, China Unicom’s number of 3G users is now well past 80 percent of China Mobile’s 3G subscriber base [1], and is closing in at a rate that suggests that the smaller rival might surpass China Mobile in terms of 3G by 2013 Q1.

New stats for the end of March (2012 Q1) show that China Unicom’s 3G (WDCMA) smartphone subs amounted to 48.86 million, out of 160.63 million total GSM mobile users. China Mobile, meanwhile, rocked up to 59.56 million on 3G (TD-SCMA) from a whopping 667.2 million on its entire network. Historically, China Mobile has been hobbled by its localized TD-SCDMA data network, which doesn’t work with most global phones or tablets. China Unicom, in contrast, can be used with any global WCDMA phone, such as the popular models like the Samsung Galaxy S and SII and is the first to get Apple’s iPhone and iPad in China (with it coming later to China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728) for its CDMA network).

In total, China has just over a billion mobile users by now.

Here’s an interactive graph showing the 3G user-ship of Unicom relative to China Mobile; note the fast-shrinking proportional gap between the two rivals:

[Download image version of chart]

China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) has announced that it’ll launch its 4G mobile data service over the border in Hong Kong starting next week. The 100 MBps next-generation LTE will start on April 25th, and will likely come with deals on new 4G smartphones – though China Mobile has not yet named any devices.

While China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile telco in terms of users – and the market leader in mainland China – it is a relative newcomer to the SAR of Hong Kong, where it’s behind the four other carriers. They are, in descending order of subscribers, Hutchinson’s 3, Telstra’s CSL, PCCW, and SmarTone-Vodafone.

The gradual move to 4G will be an opportunity to seize customers from rivals, presuming that Hong Kongers feel the need for pricier 4G monthly data packages, and if the available phones are attractive enough.

China Mobile’s press release from its HK subsidiary explains that the full rollout of LTE will take some time:

By the end of 2012, CMHK plans to scale up its 4G LTE coverage to a level on par with its current network, while indoor coverage will be up to 80 percent.

Director and CEO at China Mobile Hong Kong, Sean Lee, added:

We are extremely optimistic about the development of 4G LTE technology. More and more operators are turning their eyes to 4G LTE. Mobile device makers indicate that up to 20 4G smartphone and tablet products will be launched in 2012, which is a key reason to believe that 4G will be picking up faster than 3G.

He also told Bloomberg that a “total of 10 4G phones will become available for customers this year,” but without naming any brands, or specifying if they might be iOS, Android, or Windows Phone.

In addition to next week’s launch, China Mobile has said it will make available data roaming services for both 3G and 4G for customers when they travel to mainland China. It’ll be available only with an additional monthly fee, and seems aimed at businesspeople who work a lot in the mainland.

Just yesterday we looked at a report which found that only 10 mobile telcos across Asia had fully rolled out 4G services. We can now bump that number up to 11. PCCW (HKG:0008) will do likewise in Hong Kong later this year.

Squeezing yourself onto Beijing’s crowded public transportation just got a little more rewarding: soon, at least some buses will be free wifi hotspots. Beijing, it seems, is finally getting into wifi; earlier this year we also saw the rollout of free wifi in Beijing’s Central Business District.

This news comes to us from the Legal Evening News, which says that China Mobile’s Beijing subsidiary has already worked out a deal with the Beijing Public Transit Group, which operates Beijing’s bus system.

It’s not clear whether all buses will be equipped with wifi equipment, or exactly how the connection will work. It’s possible that passengers will need a China Mobile phone number to access the free internet, although the Legal Evening News piece implies that’s not the case.

In addition to the regular internet, passengers will also be able to use the free wifi to access a special transportation network that will give them information about bus routes, other transportation services, and special deals. The addition of internet access could certainly make riding the bus in Beijing more interesting, so long as it isn’t so crowded that your arms are pinned to your sides so you can’t even look at your phone (that happens sometimes).

[Legal Evening News via Sina Tech]

Right now across Asia, 63 percent of mobile telcos have rolled out 4G LTE services, or are now conducting trials or have firm plans. That’s the finding of ABI Research in a new paper on the infrastructure for the next-gen mobile data network that will eventually supersede 3G.

Of course, trials and plans do not help consumers stream any movies at blazing web speeds, so the reality is that 4G is fully deployed in very few areas of the Asia-Pacific region – mainly in Japan and South Korea. Indeed, ABI notes:

Out of 110 networks, 10 operators (9 percent) have commercial 4G LTE networks up and running. Another 58 (53 percent) either have specific plans to roll out LTE or are conducting trials.

That’s some way behind the deployment rates among North American and European carriers. Jake Saunders, ABI’s vice president of forecasting, added:

We estimate total Asia-Pacific mobile capital expenditure to reach US$53.3 billion by the end of 2012. 62 percent is still very much earmarked for radio access network deployment. Other key investment areas include EPC and gateway upgrades to the core network at 9 percent, as well as improving in-building wireless coverage into dense urban centers at 5.7 percent.

In Japan, we recently reported that NTT Docomo has two million LTE subscribers; whilst in neighboring South Korea, SK Telecom paid nearly a billion dollars for a key LTE spectrum last year, and is now busy wooing consumers with smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE, hoping to lure people away from 3G.

China, meanwhile, has said that 4G can wait another two to three years for an initial roll-out while the nation concentrates on strengthening its 3G infrastructure. China will use the LTE-TDD standard that Apple will reportedly support. Trials are indeed underway, but are limited in scope even within the select half dozen cities where it’s being tested.

We’ve not seen so much action out of India, so thankfully ABI has been keeping its eyes peeled there:

Heavy RAN [LTE-RAN, a different network standard] investment has been taking place in India. A number of operators are jockeying for position in a very competitive marketplace. On April 10, Bharti Airtel became the first operator to launch 4G LTE services in India, in Kolkata. Bharti Airtel hopes to launch 4G services in Bangalore before June 2012. Equipment spend is not just occurring in 4G. The Indian operator, Idea, has continued to roll out 2,270 2G cell sites and 1,176 3G cell sites in the past year.

Singapore will allocate airwaves for 4G next year, says Reuters, but an island-wide rollout is not expected until 2016.

[Source: ABI Research]

In the process of conducting an evaluation of China’s internet in which the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology found that 98 percent of Chinese sites were up to code in terms of security, the Ministry has also apparently discovered some big problems in the app stores of both China Mobile and China Telecom. Although there are no details yet on exactly what these flaws are, the Ministry’s assistant director of telecom security, Xiong Sihao, did say that some of the issues are “holes” that could potentially be exploited to collect users’ data.

Xiong also expressed displeasure at the seemingly-glacial pace of security development:

Looking at the industry now, there has not been any fundamental change in the [security] weaknesses of the [telecom] operators’ internet environment. Although there have been improvements, there has not been any fundamental change.

This news will probably help amplify calls that the government needs to be more active in mandating that companies meet security standards and protect user data. Personally, I can’t help but wonder, if even China Mobile and Telecom’s official app stores are full of holes, how much worse must some of those third-party app stores be?

[Guangzhou Daily via Sina Tech]

For an officially atheist country, China is kind of a prude (hello angry commenters, it’s just a joke!). Pornography in any form is illegal here; that’s part of why so many mainland tourists flocked to Hong Kong to see 3D Sex and Zen when that came out. Regular websites are easy enough to filter, but mobile sites have had an easier time slipping through the cracks. Until now, that is.

China Mobile has apparently been cracking down on these sites over the past few months, and its numbers are impressive. As of the end of February, it had apparently blocked 544,709 mobile porn domains. That’s an awful lot of porn. Most of it wasn’t domestic, though; apparently 98.8 percent of the domains blocked were foreign.

The company has been able to achieve such impressive numbers thanks to a new automated “smart” system that is apparently highly efficient. It’s not clear exactly how the tech works, but with 500,000+ domains blocked, it’s clearly doing something. Is the mobile porn in China becoming a thing of the past? Probably. But somehow, I suspect that China’s porn fans will continue to find ways to, er, penetrate the firewalls.

[CNII via Sina Tech]

DeNA (TYO:2432) has been building a range of partnerships in China over the past few months in order to help expand its Mobage China social gaming platform. Today the company’s Chinese subsidiary is announcing perhaps its biggest partners to date, as it has signed deals with all three of China’s major mobile carriers, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL), China Unicom (NYSE:CHU), and China Telecom (NYSE:CHA).

This means that Android users in China will be able to now find Mobage China games in each of the carrier’s official mobile app stores. This is especially important given that Google’s own app store, Google Play, is not supported in China presently. You can check out the screenshots provided by DeNA below.

If you look at China’s three major carriers, they collectively service about a billion subscribers. But as for 3G customers, the most recent figures we’ve seen show that China Mobile leads with 56.59 million, followed by China Unicom and China Telecom with 45.89 million and 41.15 million respectively.

Its activity in China is a big part of the company’s global Mobage push, which also includes a relatively soft rollout of its first iOS games on Mobage Global (or ngmoco’s English-language Mobage). Meanwhile its rival GREE has been busy releasing the first few titles from it’s North American studio, in Zombie Jombie and Alien Family.

China Mobile

China Telecom

China Unicom

According to a report by Reuters, China’s total amount of mobile subscribers is about to surpass – or indeed, may have already surpassed – the one billion mark. After a 1.2 percent gain in February, the total figure for the nation’s mobile subscribers was at 999.7 million.

It was expected that the milestone might be passed in February – in fact, we blogged about it a month ago) – but it looks as though we’ll have to put away our balloons and confetti until the official March figures are released [1].

But seriously folks, if you look at the breakdown of subscribers in the chart above, you can see that China Mobile accounts for the biggest share by far, with 661.4 million subscribers in total. But that’s largely due to its ginormous 2G subscriber base. It’s advantage over China Unicom and China Telecom in the 3G space is nowhere near as comfortable.

[Interactive version of chart]

China Mobile (NYSE:CHL, HKG:0941) used to be the king of China’s telecommunications industry. Sure, Unicom and Telecom existed, but why would anyone use them when China Mobile’s coverage was so much better? That was what my Chinese friends told me when I first came to China in 2007. But oh, how a few years can change things! China Mobile remains China’s largest player in the mobile arena, but the advent of 3G and the increasing popularity of internet-based apps has slowed its growth significantly. Behold some charts:

So what the heck is going on here? Obviously, it’s complicated, but the number one reason for the slowing of China Mobile’s growth is that thanks to the increasing popularity of 3G, China Unicom and China Telecom are eating China Mobile’s lunch. China Mobile’s 3G is on a TD-SCDMA network, which is widely considered to be inferior to other 3G technologies. As a result, when previous China Mobile 2G customers choose to make the jump to 3G, they tend to switch carriers, too. So China Mobile is picking up new customers more slowly, and those new customers tend to be paying it less, too, because they generally just want regular — not 3G — service.

China Mobile hopes to escape its 3G funk by leading the way with a 4G-LTE network, which it is already testing in several cities across China. But it has thus far had difficulty landing the permits — it appears the government wants to allow 3G networks to develop for a while before letting 4G into the country — and the implementation of 4G may still be years away.

[via Sina Tech]

With China’s Congress in session, the Minister of Industry and IT, Miao Wei, has revealed that the country will not launch a 4G mobile network for another two to three years. Although 4G trials are currently underway in a few cities, the minister said that the timing was dictated by the building of the higher-speed network’s base-stations, which ought to exceed 200,000 by the end of 2013. And that’s when a nationwide roll-out might actually happen.

For now, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) will have to make do with its 3G network which uses the home-grown TD-SCDMA protocol that’s not used anywhere else in the world. This has made it tough to get killer devices onto the network – though it finally did last year, with help from the likes of Motorola (NYSE:MMI) with its customized-for-China Atrix phone. But the country’s leading mobile network needs another boost, prompting one China Mobile executive to hint that China Mobile will soon launch a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) device – that would most likely by a HTC or Nokia model. Both HTC (TPE:2498) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK) are racing to be the first to launch a WP7-powered phone in China, and so it seems that China Mobile will be in on the action.

That’s in contrast to China Mobile’s misfortune in not being able to persuade Apple to make a TD-SCDMA version of the iPhone. Nonetheless, just over 15 million locals use their unlocked iPhones on the network anyway, using mere 2G (i.e. GPRS) if they want to get mobile data.

In the interim, the IT minister said that China’s three mobile telcos will have to boost their 3G network in order to bring on more subscribers before the move to 4G. For the government’s preferred mobile network, the semi state-owned China Mobile, that means planning to have as many as 400,000 TD-SCDMA (3G) base-stations in three-years time – critical to a smooth handover to 4G. The country saw 80 million new 3G users in 2011, and the grand total now stands at over 127 million 3G subscribers out of a billion nationwide phone users.

But the future 4G landscape will be fragmented by differing protocols – just as was the case with 3G. China Mobile will use the LTE TDD variant (though it’s not a homegrown solution, unlike TD-SCDMA), while most American networks use LTE FDD. The former is better known as WiMax, and the latter as simply ‘LTE.’ China is pushing for LTE TDD to be the global standard.

[Source: HC360 Telecom news - article in Chinese]

China Mobile (HKG:0941, NASDAQ:CHL) has been in the news recently for rather unflattering reasons (yes, China Mobile, corruption at the executive level does make you look fat), but chairman Wang Jianzhou wants to spread some good news: China Mobile has more than 15 million iPhone users.

Of course, that’s especially impressive given that China Mobile’s 3G network doesn’t support the iPhone so China Mobile iPhone users can’t get any 3G service. Although rivals China Unicom and China Telecom both offer iPhone-supporting 3G networks now, apparently millions of people just love China Mobile too much to leave it.

Of course, China Mobile isn’t planning to stay out of the iPhone game forever. According to Wang, it has been continuously in contact with Apple, and its 4G-LTE network should be friendly to future iPhones, if it ever gets off the ground. The company has been having a bit of regulatory trouble because, it seems, the Chinese government wants to further develop domestic 3G before moving on to the next technology, but China Mobile did recently expand 4G-LTE test areas to more cities and may be able to have the thing up and running in time for the iPhone 5 to come out in China (likely early 2013).

[Beijing Daily via Sina Tech]

Is China Mobile (HKG:0941, NASDAQ:CHL) in trouble for corruption again? After several recent rounds of restructuring, it appears the company may still be plagued with problems; today the Chinese media is reporting rumors that China Mobile VP and Executive Director Lu Xiangdong has been detained by Jilin prosecutors for questioning. When questioned, China Mobile’s PR arm did not deny the rumors, but said it was in the process of understanding the issue.

Insiders told Caixin that on the night of February 28, prosecutors from the Jilin office’s anti-corruption division took Mr. Lu from Beijing to Jilin to undergo investigation. Supposedly, the case was referred to them by China’s Supreme Court. If true, this would make Lu’s case unlike previous high-level China Mobile exec’s cases — and presumably more serious — because he is not being investigated by the Party Discipline Committee first and rather has gone straight to criminal investigation. According to the Beijing Times, this is evidence that the prosecution probably already has strong evidence against Mr. Lu.

Interestingly, the detailed description above disappeared from Caixin‘s website without explanation after a few hours. China Mobile couldn’t confirm whether it was true or not either, saying they are in the process of actively trying to understand the situation.

The disappearance of the report could indicate that it is incorrect, but more likely it has more to do with China’s media regulations. Regardless of the report’s veracity, high-level corruption is a sensitive issue and the government tends to prefer to control reporting quite tightly when a situation like this arises. China Mobile is a state-owned company, and corruption at its highest levels could also implicate government officials directly. There’s a good chance the Caixin report’s deletion is just an attempt to control the story by subduing it, at least until all the facts are clear.

Of course, this is all still just rumor, though China Mobile’s non-denial sure makes it sound like something’s going on. If it’s true, we’ll likely know soon enough. Either way, we’re starting to wonder if there’s anyone at China Mobile who isn’t corrupt…

[Beijing Times via Sina Tech, image via CFP]

Sina Tech put together a comparison of the plans which might be interesting if you’re actually trying to buy one of these phones in China, but they also are conducting a user poll about what they think of Telecom’s plan offerings and which version of the iPhone 4S they would prefer. The results so far are pretty interesting:

What do you think of China Telecom’s 3G plans?

If you were going to buy an iPhone 4S, which version would you buy?

So Sina’s readers — 23,000+ of them, at least — prefer Telecom to Unicom, but would rather not buy a 3G plan from either of them (in practice, this generally means they’ll use the phone with a China Mobile number and no 3g). That’s interesting, and it appears to be pretty reflective of the general mood, at least on the internet. To verify, we checked out two other polls on Sina Weibo with thousands of voters, and China Telecom was chosen above China Unicom in both of them.

It’s worth noting that the reason for these votes isn’t just the pricing, which actually seems pretty similar between Telecom and Unicom. There is a general perception that China Telecom’s 3G coverage is better than Unicom’s, and that definitely played a role in some of the votes in the Sina Weibo polls.

Of course, China’s iPhone users will ultimately vote with their wallets, so we’ll have to wait and see how the Telecom version sells once it’s actually on the shelves. But if these polls are any indication, China Unicom could be facing some pretty stiff competition.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen several reports about the reshuffling China Mobile has been doing in its high-level offices all over China. It turns out that wasn’t just the executives playing musical chairs, it is actually one way of fighting corruption within the massive state-owned company.

Moving high-level players from place to place within the company is meant to ensure that they don’t have time to form deep relationships with local government officials and businessmen in any given place, which seems to lead to corruption. Insiders told the Yicai Daily that an internal report from last year implicated 11 China Mobile employees in corruption cases involving over 500 million RMB ($79 million). This report was delivered to China’s State Council, a high-level governing body. The State Council then delivered comments that will shape China Mobile’s strategic approach this year.

The employee shuffling was step one, but insiders say the company will also likely be auditing and reforming internally, and those reforms might include removing personnel from their positions.

This is far from the first time the telecom giant has been associated with corruption. A flurry of reports last summer implicated China Mobile employees in accepting bribes and other forms of corruption, and ultimately led to a government corruption probe into all three of the major telecoms.

[Yicai Daily via Sina Tech]

Basically, the Morgan Stanley analyst believes Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) can vastly up its iPhone sales in China, reaching 40 million by 2013, if it can get access to China Mobile’s (NSYE:CHL, HKG:0941) subscribers, which has vastly more high-end subscribers than any of the other telecom operators in China. (The iPhone is currently only available on China Unicom, although unlocked phones are used on other networks). See the image below for an illustration of this.

Morgan Stanley expects the new iPhone to launch on China Mobile’s 4G-LTE network in late 2012 or early 2013, and sees that driving massive sales of iPhones. Chinese analysts aren’t so sure.

There are plenty of reasons for skepticism. First, while high-end phones are becoming more popular in China, the iPhone might be better classified as uber-high-end….at least when it comes to price. White collar workers willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for a smartphone may not be willing to shell out the near-thousand it will take to get an iPhone when the thing finally comes to China Mobile for real.

Moreover, China Mobile’s 4G network is currently in regulatory purgatory, and may remain there for a while as China attempts to develop the 3G market.

Of course, it’s all hypothetical at this point. Do you think Apple is going to hit 40 million iPhone sales in China this year?

As of the end of 2011, here’s how things stand: China Mobile has 51,210,000 3G users, for approximately 40 percent of China’s 3G market. China Unicom has 40,010,000 3G users (31 percent of the market), and China Telecom has 36,290,000 3G users (29 percent of the market). It’s a pretty even spread amongst the three telecoms, who all stand to make money but are also in for fiercer competition as 3G user numbers increase.

All in all, China had 127 million 3G users as of the end of 2011, and the rate of growth in 3G adoption neared 200 percent during that year. 2012 stands to be another big year for 3G growth, especially since the government seems to be ensuring that 4G isn’t allowed to steal any thunder while the 3G market is still developing.

[China Securities via Sina Tech]

China Mobile wants their 4G TD-LTE network out soon to capitalize when the next iPhone is released.

China’s biggest telecom provider, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL), has been facing a challenge from China Unicom (NYSE:CHU) as demand for 3G services in the country expands, mostly since China Unicom is the only official partner for the iPhone (although millions of iPhone owners jailbreak their phones and use them on China Mobile).

So it’s not hard to understand why the folks at China Mobile have been so gung-ho about 4G TD-LTE network technology. Last year, the company ran successful tests of TD-LTE in seven cities around China, and had planned more widespread testing and perhaps even a commercial launch for this year. But according to Taiwan’s Digitimes, its plans have been stymied by government supervisory authorities, who have thus far declined to grant the relevant permits.

This is especially bad news as China Mobile hopes they can be the first network to support the next iPhone model, which many have speculated will support a 4G network of some kind. China Mobile even spoke with Apple and supposedly received a “positive answer” when they asked about a 4G LTE handset.

Without permits, China Mobile’s 4G TD-LTE network is essentially in purgatory. Some have speculated that the government wants to allow 3G networks — which aren’t yet widely used in China — to grow in popularity before pushing another new mobile networking tech on consumers who might get confused.

Whatever the reasons, China Mobile’s 4G TD-LTE network is going nowhere without those permits, so if you were holding your breath waiting, we suggest you stop. You could be in for a bit of a wait.

[Digitimes via Sina Tech]

(Image source: Millward Brown's latest BrandZ report)

The market research firm Millward Brown has just released the 2012 edition of its ‘BrandZ most valuable Chinese brands top 50’ report. It sees more Chinese tech firms that ever on the list, including well-known names in social media.

Indeed, some tech brands are growing most quickly in terms of what’s called “brand value” – that’s a measure used by some analysts derived from a company’s ability to generate demand, based partially on forecasted earnings. The report’s authors note that “this explosion of [brand] value suggests the enormous influence that Chinese brands exert and their potential impact on markets worldwide.”

One successful example is the local manufacturer Haier (SHA:600690; HKG:1169), who launched a mini-site about energy conservation to coincide with Earth Hour. Chris Maier, the research company’s director of digital media, notes:

Haier’s Earth Hour website received over 1.5 million visitors after only 10 days online, indicating the success of social media as a platform for Haier to spread its message of promoting a smarter life for a better planet. Importantly, the Earth Hour initiative is very much in line with Haier’s renewed brand positioning as a developer of sustainable white goods solutions and producer of environmentally responsible and energy efficient appliances.

It’s that kind of engaged marketing that saw Chinese tech companies do especially well in terms of their own brand value. Here’s the table (click the two panels to enlarge):

In the top 50 list (below), there are 14 tech firms; in descending order:

• China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) in first place
• Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) in sixth
• Tencent (HKG:0700) in tenth
• China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728)
• China Unicom (NYSE:CHU; HKG:0762)
• Suning (SHE:002024)
• Lenovo (HKG:0992)
• Sina (NASDAQ:SINA)
• Haier (SHA:600690; HKG:1169)
• Midea (SHE:000527)
• Gome (HKG:0493)
• Renren (NYSE:RENN)
• Ctrip (NASDAQ:CTRP)
• Sohu (NASDAQ:SOHU), in 49th position.

Please come back tomorrow to check out how some of the individual tech companies have been boosting their brands this year. The full 55-page report – in either Chinese or English – is available from the Millward Brown BrandZ mini-site.

[Note: Your correspondent has no relation to the Millward Brown group despite the familial name!]

A $100 Android device? That’s so passé. That’s because $50 Android smartphones are on the way for 2012. A brand-new pair of budget chipsets devised by the Chinese manufacturer Spreadtrum (NASDAQ:SPRD) will bring down the cost of entry to the world of smartphones very soon, with manufacturers able to make – says Spreadtrum – “$40 to 50” handsets that are expected to hit stores in China sometime next month. The chipsets – which hold an ARM 9 600MHz processor, and can support only the older Android 2.2 OS – have just starting shipping to OEMs.

One of the pair is the SC8805G (pictured above) which supports China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) TD-SCDMA 3G network. The country’s largest mobile telco has already certified it for use on its network, and will likely subsidize a range of very low-price Android smartphones that will certainly be cheaper than its previous promotions for 1000RMB ($157) devices, such as the Huawei U8110, which is better known as the IDEOS (pictured below).

Previously one of China's cheapest Android phones, the IDEOS will soon by usurped by new $40 to $50 smartphones.

It’s not yet known which OEMs will be first to adopt Spreadtrum’s new chipset – but manufacturers have known they were coming for months in advance and will have been prepping devices in good time to ship in January, ready for Chinese New Year. Likely candidates include Chinese firms such as ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063), Haier (SHA:600690; HKG:1169), and Huawei as well.

This development should increase the rate of 3G adoption in China, which has so far been quite slow. Currently, China Mobile has 43.2 million 3G users (in most recent stats for Q3 2011), the highest of China’s three carriers, despite running a made-for-China 3G spectrum not used anywhere else in the world.

The other chipset is the SC6810 for GSM handsets and which supports only 2G/GPRS plus wifi, and will likely power super-cheap Android phones on China’s other two networks as well.

In a press release to mark the shipping of these cheapest-ever Android-based chipsets, Spectrum’s president and CEO Dr. Leo Li, remarked that they were a first move into smartphones for his company, as well as a game-changing “new price segment that will make smartphone devices more accessible to consumers in China and emerging markets.”

Motorola (NYSE:MMI) announced this afternoon that its newest Droid RAZR, the MT917, is coming to the country’s biggest mobile telco, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), in mid-December. It’ll be a boost to the carrier’s struggling Chinese-standard TD-SCDMA 3G network. The most astonishing thing about Motorola’s latest Android-powered flagship is that it has a 13-megapixel camera (pictured above), allowing you to create eye-splittingly sharp pictures which you can then grunge-ify with a photo-filter/sharing app so that it ends up looking like it was taken on a 1970’s instant camera.

The Motorola MT917 that's heading to China Mobile in mid-December. Click to enlarge.

In addition to that 1080p HD camera, the MT917’s screen will be 720p HD, with a 1280 by 720 pixels resolution across its 4.5-inch expanse of Corning Gorilla glass. The front-facing camera is a better-than-usual 1.3-megapixels, for improved video chatting, which will surely look nice when used with, say, Tencent’s (HKG:0700) Weishi app.

A Motorola China representative told Penn-Olson that the MT917’s price has not been announced, and will actually be set by the carrier, China Mobile. For some reason, China’s three mobile telcos never manage to come up with enticing price-tags for their devices, rendering them more expensive than the same phone from a grey-market source, such as smuggled in from Hong Kong. Expect China Mobile to price it well north of 5,000 RMB (US$783) without a contract (as most phones here are bought) when it hits official sales channels next month.

The rear of the phone gets a kevlar fibre panel which gives it that unique effect that’s more like a Formula 1 car’s body than a conventional phone. The standard Droid Razr (MT910) that went to America’s Verizon (NYSE:VZ) network looks similar externally, but has less strong specs.

As with other official Motorola releases in China, it comes with extra, localized features such as the company’s own Shop4Apps store. It’s not clear if China Mobile will add stuff of its own.

via Popcap

Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies has been a big hit in China, just like it has everywhere else. This weekend at GDC China, Popcap announced that together with China Mobile, it will be taking things a step further and releasing a new game mode for Plants vs. Zombies based on the popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients, which is hugely popular with PC gamers in China.

The Popcap-China Mobile cooperation isn’t just limited to this new DotA mode, though, as other Popcap games will be featured on China Mobile’s own gaming platform, and Popcap also plans to develop two new games for the platform.

As for the DotA mode in Plants vs. Zombies, that’s about as much detail as anyone has released at the moment, but we can make some educated guesses based on the fundamental gameplay elements of Defense of the Ancients. That game puts players into two teams on opposing sides of a large map and tasks them with destroying heavily-defended structures in their enemy’s base using player-controlled heroes as well as AI bots.

It’s difficult to know how far Popcap might take their Plants vs. Zombies homage, but given that the game is meant to run on mobile phones, we’re guessing it will be a fairly simplified version, perhaps one where players are tasked with dispatching plants and/or zombies to destroy a base or some other structure on the opposite site of the lawn that appears in most versions of the game. But who knows! We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for this one.

China Mobile, itself a state-owned company, also took the opportunity at GDC to press the government for better IP protection regulations in response to discussion about the advantages of paid vs. free models for game distribution.

[Via Sina Tech]