China Mobile has begun collecting bids from companies who are interested in participating the TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) phone purchase tender floated by China Mobile on September 29, the Sina Tech News reported on October 25. Under this tender, China Mobile plans to purchase six million TD-SCDMA phones with mobile TV functions, 3.6 million of which will be entry-level models and 2.4 million of which will be mid-range models, according to the same source. According to China Mobile CEO Wang Jianyu, the purchase will embrace the direct procurement model so as to reduce costs.
There are several prerequisites set by China Mobile for TD-SCDMA phones that must be met. Qualified phones shall be models that either were included into China Mobile's TD-SCDMA product portfolios after January 2010 (including January) and were tested in August or September 2010; or shall be models that were included into China Mobile's product portfolio during 2010 and were sold over 10,000 units. Mobile phones purchased through this tender will be released by year-end 2010 to every province served by China Mobile. Prior to this tender, China Mobile invited a TD-CDMA phone purchase tender in 2008, with a total of 215,000 units being purchased. Nearly 20 Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and three international brand-name vendors Motorola, Samsung, and LG were selected. Chinese TD-SCDMA phones' share of the total TD-SCDMA phones purchased by China Mobile reached 86%, or 185,000 units. The number of digital TV phone purchased before the Beijing Olympics Games totaled 40,000 and four companies were selected including New Postcom, ZTE, Potevio, and Lenovo, according again to the Sina Tech News.
China Unicom recently acquired 75% stake in a Nigeria-based telecom operator Nitel for US$500 million through NGTC (New Generations Telecommunications Consortium), 20% stake of which is owned by China Unicom, while the remaining stake is shared by the Minerva Group and GiCell Wireless, the Sohu News reported on October 25. This move marks China Unicom's first foray into the oversea market.
Meanwhile, China Telecom recently revealed that the company plans to launch a new batch of 3G four-channel mobile phones, which not only support CDMA and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standards but also allow EVDO (Evolution Data Only) and Wi-Fi (Wireless-Fidelity) broadband connections. The new 3G four-channel mobile phone developed by Potevio and dubbed the N930 is operated based on the Android platform Aside from Potevio, Samsung also is poised to launch a four-channel mobile phone designed for China Telecom.