On the heels of China Mobile and China Unicom's mobile reading platform debuts, China Telecom announced on September 8 that the company is poised to launch its mobile reading platform, dubbed the e-Surfing, in Hangzhou, capital of Zhenjiang Province, Eastern China, SinoCast Daily Business Beat News reported. Thus far, China Telecom has established eight product bases in six provinces and cities across China and its new reading base will be operated by Zhejiang Telecom, a subsidiary of China Telecom in Zhejiang, according to the same source. In addition, China Telecom entered an agreement with more than 50 publishers and content providers, including Zhejiang Publishing Group, CITIC Publishing Houses and Shanda Literature, aiming to raise the number of such counterparts to about 100 at year-end 2010. Moreover, China Telecom also had signed an agreement with the Shanda Literature over a 55-45 profit sharing plan.

 

China Mobile recently revealed that a total of 1,700 TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) terminals were sold as of the end of July 2010, the Sohu IT News reported. So far, the number of TD-SCDMA terminals available in the marketplace is totaled 478. According to China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), the number of 3G users reached 28.08 million, 11.83 million of which were TD-SCDMA users. Meanwhile, ZTE recently launched seven TD-SCDMA phones, five of which were TD-SCDMA phones incorporated with CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) mobile TV chips to support CMMB digital TV.

 

Moreover, Sony Ericsson announced on September 8 the debut of its first TD-SCDMA Smartphone model, dubbed the A8i, which is based on China Mobile's OPhone OS 2.0 and supports CMMB functionality. Sony Ericsson stated that the company will begin promotions for such device in October 2010 in cooperation with China Mobile. Aside from Sony Ericson, other international brand-name vendors such as Motorola, Samsung and LG already introduced TD-SCDMA phones based on the OPhone platform; Nokia, however, currently is still offering TD-SCDMA Smartphone operating on the Symbian platform. Of all international brands, Samsung shows the most ambition with more than 10 TD-SCDMA mobile phones available in China.