- Taiwanese Smartphone maker HTC announced on August 10 that the company plans to jointly launch a NFC (Near Field Communications) phone, in collaboration with China's state-owned electronic payment service provider China UnionPay, the China Daily News reported. Following a six month of collaboration with UnionPay, HTC stated that the new NFC phone - featuring a 4-inch screen and operates on Google's Android OS and the first of its kind to support China UnionPay's NFC mobile payment standard - is projected to hit the market in the upcoming September. To date, there are 400,000 POS (Point of Sale) machines currently available in China and are expected to increase to 700,000 by year-end 2011, the China Daily reported.

 

- China Mobile recently entered a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Rohde &Schwarz through its R&D division, China Mobile Research Institute, as part of the company's efforts to deploy its demonstration network using the homegrown TD-LTE (Time Division-Long Term Evolution) technology, the EETime Taiwan reported. Under the MoU, both parties plan to join hands in the development of TD-LTE tools and systems in order to accelerate the TD-LTE commercialization in China. In addition, China Mobile stated that should the preliminary tests on TD-LTE devices complete, the company will introduce those said devices into its TD-LTE demonstration network, according to the same source. China Mobile is set to launch the commercialization of its TD-LTE network service in 2012 and China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) predicted that TD-LTE will not witness significant rollouts until 2014.  

 

Furthermore, China Mobile recently revealed that the company already completed the setup of its preliminary TD-LTE demonstration network in six cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Xiamen, the Sohu IT News reported on August 10. The company also is projected to set up an additional of 1,000 base stations. Meanwhile, China's MIIT is set to release an access license allowing telecommunications and broadcasting services suppliers to co-operate their respective services by September 2011; by year-end 2011, the MIIT is projected to expand the scope of its TD-LTE demonstration network to other provincial cities.