- China Unicom recently recruited five strategic partners, including Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel Lucent Shanghai Bell, Ericsson, and Neusoft, to help the company develop applications in the emerging industries, the Xinhua News reported on April 27. Aside from these five partners, China Unicom is planning to tie up with an additional of 30 enterprises in different industries to help China Unicom expand its presence in diverse areas such as mobile office, mobile business administration, mobile payment, and mobile e-shopping. Recently, China Unicom demonstrated 20 service applications under three key areas, which are mobile office, Internet of Things, and e-commence, in 12 cities in China, including Beijing, Haerbin, Shijazhuang, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Nanning, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xin, according again to the same source.
In addition, China Unicom also entered into separate strategic agreements with five mobile phone retailers in Guangdong, in a bid to boost its 3G service market presence, the China Tech News reported, adding that this is the first time China Unicom collaborating with Chinese regional mobile phone retailers since the commercialization of its WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) service. The five mobile phone retailers include Shenzhen Hengbo, Guangdong Dadi, Dongguan Jietong, Guangdong Junhe, and Guangdong Longyue. Pursuant to the agreement, these five retailers will be granted to sell a wide range of its products and services based on WCDMA, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), and broadband technologies. Meanwhile, retailers will set up specific zones for China Unicom in their 1,200 stores, which cover many provinces in Southern and Central China such as Guangdong province. There retailers are dedicated to selling Chinese and international branded mobile phones in China, with its total mobile phone shipment volume reaching around three million units per year, around 40% of which are WCDMA phones, according again to the China Tech News.
China Unicom launched its WCDMA service in 2009. By the end of March 2011, China Unicom subscribers totaled 18.53 million, with the subscriber addition in March alone approaching 1.86 million, according again to the Xinhua News.
- China Mobile recently revealed that the company is projected to sell 40.0 million mobile terminals in 2011, over half of which is expected to be mobile phones supporting either TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous CDMA) or TD-LTE (TD-Long Term Evolution) technology, the China Business News reported on April 28, adding that all the subsequent mobile terminals launched by China Mobile in 2011 will all support NFC (Near Field Communications) technology. In addition, China Mobile stated that the company currently has been working on the establishment of the nationwide NFC standard, according to the same source.