“The head of China Mobile has called on Apple to include Beijing’s home-grown standard for third-generation mobile services in the next generation of the iPhone, underscoring the growing pressures on the world’s largest mobile operator to attract 3G subscribers,” Kathrin Hille reports for The Financial Times. “The request comes amid fears that China Mobile risks falling behind rivals China Telecom and China Unicom – the only telecom operator in the country to have a distribution deal with Apple for the iPhone – in signing up subscribers.”
“Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile chairman and chief executive, said at the group’s annual results yesterday that ‘including TD-SCDMA is not that hard to do – RIM is doing it,'” Hille reports. “But he added that Apple had not yet responded to his proposal.”
MacDailyNews Take: For some reason, we imagine Jobs saying, “Remember our negotiations over iPhone, Wang? Yeah, the ones where you insisted on running your own App Store (chuckles) and you couldn’t come to terms no matter what. Think about them for a bit longer.”
Hille continues, “Telecom industry experts cautioned that Apple was unlikely to follow RIM very quickly. The inclusion of TD would require an additional chip, and that could be difficult to place in a device as slim as the iPhone… China Mobile is the only one of the three telecoms operators in China to use the country’s home-grown TD-SCDMA standard, putting it at a disadvantage to its two rivals which have more widely used technology. [iPhone carrier] China Unicom has a licence for 3G services using the 3GSM standard, the world’s most widespread, while China Telecom uses the WCDMA 3G standard used in North America.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This, plus Verizon in the U.S., are the nails in iPhone competitors’ coffins if Jobs decides to to go a-hammerin’.
[Attribution: The Register. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lava_Head_UK” for the heads up.]
You can bet jobs has a long memory, as well he should.
Somewhere Steve Jobs is giggling.
If their TD-SCDMA standard has the same shortcoming that Verizon’s has, then it’s not just the addition of a chip that would be required. Apple would also have to change the iPhone OS to not allow sending voice and data at the same time.
“China Mobile is the only one of the three telecoms operators in China to use the country’s home-grown TD-SCDMA standard…”
That, in a nutshell, is most of their problem. Using proprietary tech that the most popular smart phone in the world doesn’t. Not good.
But, how many potential customers of the iPhone does this company have?
MW: “friend” as in not China.
I think the integrated consumer spy system of TD-SCDMA would nicely complete US Echelon bad-patriots watch… Hand in hand with Google, M$ AND Apple’s iTune this could make a Super-Big Brother!
@fandango
China greatly desires to own technology leadership and and sees itself as the largest market in the world as having the right to set standards. There is going to be a sizable battle rage between the US and China in this area.
In addition, China is encouraging the creation of behemoth companies, like Korea, to dominate world markets.
@ fandango,
“Using proprietary tech” is wrong. That’s the last thing a Mac user should be bitchin’ on.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Dear Steve Jobs,
Please make a TD-SCDMA phone for China Mobile in exchange for them paying off America’s debts to China. Thank you.
The iPhone you got is the iPhone your gonna get. Apple will not make a different one for China OR Verizon.
Interesting trying to understand the strategy.
It seems like iPhone on Verizon, at this point, would limit the need and the shelf space for some lesser smart phones.
Verizon and Apple are both control freaks, which is the only reason I can figure that this hasn’t already happened.
Imagine how few Droids would have sold if iPhone had been made available at the same time on Verizon……
That would have been an interesting head to head…..
Interesting to me how everything is a “standard.” What makes them call these things standards. I thought a standard was something some body decided was the way things should be done. Like W3C and web standards. Like ethernet or IEEE 1394 are standards and everyone is supposed to follow those. These cell phone “standards” are really just proprietary protocols trying to be passed off as standards. The lack of a standard is why we have this mess. And Big Al, what standards are you implying that Apple doesn’t follow. Hopefully not Windows. Windows is an operating system, not a standard. It may be a very common OS, but it still isn’t a standard. Seems to me Unix is closer to a standard than Windows. In my experience Apple does a much better job of trying to follow actual standards than most any other hardware or software company. All I see Microsoft doing is trying to make up there own “standards” so they can continue to lock their customers into their OS. At least when Apple tries to introduce a new standard (which they have successfully done), they support whatever standard is ultimately decided on.
“Using proprietary tech” is wrong. That’s the last thing a Mac user should be bitchin’ on.
OK, I’ll bite: Whose ISN’T?? Is WinMob or WIndows itself open source? How about Android? Got WebOS? And–please–don’t give us that Linux option crap.
I sit at the feet of the learned one for a response.
I have no concrete info in this but some questions.
Does this China Mobile initiative have anything to do with Google pulling out? Read some speculation that with Google persona non grata in China there might be some back room pressure on Android phones and Google tech in general (email, maps). Lots of rumors in months past of big plans of Chinese phone makers with Android, some say they are now tempered. Some phone makers are replacing Google search on their Android phones e.g Motorola Chinese Android phones have Bing.
China Mobile has over 500 million subscribers.
Sidenote: Multi touch is very important in Asian countries as it’s easier to write Characters (like Chinese or Kanji) than type. Asians love texting. IPad will be Big. Apple bought a Chinese company HWpen dealing with character recognition some time ago . Keyboardless input is actually a big advantage in Asia. See top schools, colleges getting iPads. (In the future will we see Apple suing Chinese OEMs with HWpen patents? lol
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Since iPhone must be a world phone, to support China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA and similarly Verizon’s CDMA2000 in iPhone means multiple standards have to be supported. Not sure if there exist combo chipsets for TD-SCDMA/WCDMA/GSM, but the cost will definitely be higher to support multiple standards.
@chaz
TD-SCDMA is not tech leadership. It is inferior to other 3G systems.
People that does not take risks does not make money.
People that takes risks may make some money.
Idiots come back too late.
Very much the only Chinese I like is Andrea.
It will be way more convenient for them to move to the widely used technology.
China Mobile has over 750 million subscribers. They arent suffering at all.
Wang Jianzhou is just screwed now. It takes a while to get on Jobs’ list of enemies but Want’s persistence at being an arrogant dick appeared to have done the magic. To Wang: Sucks to be you.
Yeah, but I think Wang rather have you tell him how get OFF Jobs shitlist
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@Vision
Not if someone wants to keep a tight control over everything. Most probably chinese techs are very aware and attentiv to all moves done around the world by big companies. Apple is a very good model of how to control a production line from top to bottom. Therefore, China will also follow this example.
I don’t think a Chinese iPhone is going to happen. I still have my doubts that even if Apple did build a custom iPhone, that it would sell very well at a high price. The Chinese just seem to like cheap knockoffs of products. Either because they don’t know the difference or just don’t care since they don’t have to pay much for a knockoff product.
I had s dream in late 2008 that the iPhone would take China by storm, but it looks like Android will be the smartphone to take China by storm. Low prices and multiple vendors that will build any type of hardware is going to be hard to beat. Even if Android’s OS is not as polished as the iPhone’s, I don’t think it’s going to matter to Chinese consumers looking for a bargain.