“After years of delays, the Chinese government said late Wednesday that it would issue licenses for next generation 3G wireless services, which could fuel growth in what is already the world’s biggest market for wireless services,” David Barboza reports for The New York Times.
“China’s State Council, or Cabinet, made the announcement on its Web site saying the government would back three standards, including one chiefly developed in China,” Barboza reports. “The move, which has been expected for much of the year, is significant because it opens the way for cellphone users here to have faster downloads of video, data and Web-browsing services, and for telecommunications companies to charge more for their high-speed services.”
MacDailyNews Take: iPhone, bitch!
Barboza continues, “China said it would issue licenses for each of the three major standards, the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard, as well as two international 3G standards that are favored in the United States and Europe.”
“The country now has more than 600 million cellphone subscribers, by far the largest number in the world, and there is fierce competition among international companies to capture market share,” Barboza reports. “By some estimates, China could have 150 million 3G cellphone subscribers by 2010, which would mean bigger revenues and profits for mobile operators.”
Barboza reports, “The government did not announce which Chinese wireless services companies would get which licenses.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “KenC” for the heads up.]
My feeling is that Apple has a design for each standard, and will sign distributors (3?) according to the standard they adopt.
“China could have 150 million 3G cellphone subscribers BY 2010” is fairly conservative. Be that as it may, 10% of that means China sales alone will account for 15 MILLION iPhones during calendar 2009.
Actually, it’s more likely that all three Chinese carriers will each get the homegrown TD-SCMA 3G standard, PLUS, get one of the two western 3G standards. The Chinese carriers don’t really want TD-SCMA either. It’s been problematic in its test trials.
TD-SCMA 3G is actually dead on arrival. However, since the Chinese Communist Party do not trust the free market yet, they want to push this “home grown” standard ( actually only a forked western standard with some bugs added ).
Apple will not choose TD-SCMA (unless by Communist fashion will be coerced to do so in order to be in this market.)
If they make the iPhone cheaper, then yes.
The normal chinese earns about $4000 US a year, and probably only 5% of the population can afford it.
I don’t see how’ll it could pickup
@bioness, you do realize that 5% of 1.6B is 80M, right?
Also, in developing countries, the amount spent upon a cellphone as a percent of income is far higher than in developed countries.
InStat estimates that 20% of cellphones sold in China cost about $500, from Dan Butterfield’s excellent blog on the Chinese cell market.
BUT, will the Chinese iPhone love you long time?
iPhone and Mac Tutorials Found at the Beijing Apple Store:
“Using Your iPhone’s Google Maps App To Find The Nearest Dog Meat Vendor”
“How CAD For Mac Can Help You Repel The Huns”
“Writing Your Own iPhone Twitter App – ‘What is Yao Ming Doing Right Now'”
”How Safari And iWeb Can Help You Blog Without Drawing Attention From The Thought Content Police”
“Using Dashboard To Swindle Unsuspecting Olympic Tourists”
“Spotting (and Designing) a Fake iPhone”
china government allocated:
WCDMA to China Unicom
TD-SCMA to China Mobile
CDMA to China Telecom
apple needs to choose which standard they want to go with in China. its obviously easiest if they stick with the WCDMA they have already.
all three 3G standards have only been just started to be built for the past few months of large scale trials only.
China Mobile, the largest of the 3 providers was awarded the home grown version.
In my opinion apple should simply stick with WCDMA and award the iPhone right to China Unicom.