China Mobile starts 3G Marketing push

China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) has now started it’s marketing push for a public beta of 3G telephony services, hinting that full deployment may be available soon after that little sporting event called the Olympics!

As we’ve reported on before, the dominant tecnology for 3G in China is not going to be the otherwise globally-accepted WCDMA, but in fact China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).

TD-SCDMA was developed as part of a larger Chinese effort to create technology standards that would not require the payment of royalties to foreign patent holders. It is not compatible with any other 3G standard, and China’s carriers have not indicated they will support any other 3G standard. However, given the size of China’s domestic mobile market — about 550 million users — even 10 percent penetration would give TD-SCDMA more users than in many nations.

This latest advancement in trialling comes after 3 years of trials, in which various sample groups and technologies have been tested. There are six handsets involved in the current trial:

• Dopod s700
• Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s l800t
• Haixin T66
• LG KD876
• Lenovo (OTCPK: LNVGY)’s TD800
• Samsung i688

Interestingly, the i688 is one of 4 models that Samsung gave to the “Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG)” for use during the Olympics next month – Samsung is also an official sponsor. Overall, 15,000 devices have been supplied – clearly there is a massive P.O. (purchase order) if Samsung is selected as a key provider, so what’s 15K devices between friends!?

[Via: PCworld.com]