SK Telecom to Develop 3G Mobile Standard in China
Faced with diminishing prospects at home, South Korea’s SK Telecom has of late been looking at China to tap into the world’s largest mobile market. The groundwork is starting to pay rich dividends.
According to published reports, SK has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government to jointly develop a 3G mobile standard in the world’s most populous nation.
South Korea’s number one mobile phone operator and the Chinese government will cooperate on the development and commercialization of TD-SCDMA, China’s home-grown 3G standard.
TD-SCDMA allows communication of numerous subscribers by dividing a spectrum into time slots unlike other platforms, which use separate spectrums for wireless transmission and reception.
TD-SCDMA is one of three technologies that is recognized by the International Telecommunications Union as the next-generation mobile telecom standard. The other two are CDMA2000 and wideband-CDMA.
Under the agreement, SK plans to set up a TD-SCDMA experimental station in Pundang, south of Seoul, in 2007 to carry out tests on the mobility-specific techniques. It will also establish a TD-SCDMA service center in China to pursue joint research in 3G multimedia services, value-added devices and platforms.
“SK Telecom is the first foreign telecom service provider to establish a cooperative relationship with China on TD-SCDMA technologies. This signifies the full recognition of our technological prowess,” SK CEO Kim Shin-bae said.
SK spokesperson Do Hoon added: “We have agreed on building a cooperative model with China for the telecom industry, for not only TD-SCDMA technologies but also beyond 3G standards.”
In June, SK had agreed to buy up to $1 billion worth of China Unicom’s (News – Alert) bonds, giving it an option on a 6.67 percent stake in China’s second-biggest mobile firm.
The Unicom share first gave SK Telecom entry into the fast-expanding Chinese market. It is the largest mobile phone market in the world in terms of subscribers. China has more than 421 million mobile phone subscribers and the number is slated to rise to at least 600 million within the next three years.
SK Telecom provides cellular services, wireless Internet services, and online Internet and Internet access via CDMA networks. Through its subsidiary, SK Teletech, it also designs, markets and sells digital handsets under the brand name Sky. The company provides international calling services, multimedia services and a telematic service called NATE Drive, which offers drivers with real-time location and traffic information.
Source- http://ipcommunications.tmcnet.com
Technorati : China, Mobile, SK Telecom, South Korea
Ice Rocket : China, Mobile, SK Telecom, South Korea
Half of mobile phones made in China this year
Chinese mainland’s mobile phone production in 2006 is expected to exceed 400 million, which will be 50% of total global mobile phone output, said Wang Bingke, deputy director of the Economic Structure Reform and Economy Operation Department under the Ministry of Information Industry.
The output of mobile phone of Chinese mainland in the first half year of 2006 is 210 million, 64% more than the same period of last year. The amount of mobile phone export has reached US$ 13.3.
Source- http://english.people.com.cn
China Telecom Net Growth Slows on Mobile Competition (Update1)
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) — China Telecom Corp., the nation’s biggest fixed-line phone operator, reported its slowest profit growth on record as competition from mobile operators intensified.
First-half net income rose 2.6 percent to 11.6 billion yuan ($1.45 billion), or 0.14 yuan a share, from 11.3 billion yuan, or 0.14 yuan, a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said today. Sales rose to 84.4 billion yuan from 80.6 billion yuan.
Chairman Wang Xiaochu, 48, has turned to high-speed Internet services and interactive television ventures to bolster earnings after cell-phone companies cut rates. At the end of June, about 33 percent of China’s population owned a cell phone, compared with 28 percent who had a fixed-line subscription, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.
“Second-half outlook remains tough,” said Kelvin Ho, an analyst at Nomura International (Hong Kong) Ltd., who rates the stock a “buy” with a target price of HK$2.95. “China Telecom will rely more on broadband for growth. Wireless operators have pre-empted competition by new entrants by cutting tariffs.”
China Telecom was expected to post earnings of 11.9 billion yuan according to the median estimate of eight analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
The first-half profit margin fell to 13.7 percent from 14 percent a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and goodwill amortization rose 4 percent to 44.2 billion yuan, China Telecom said.
Broadband Users
The company added a record 4.4 million broadband Internet users in the first six months. The company’s broadband subscribers increased 52 percent to 21 million last year from 13.9 million in 2004, it said.
China added 7.6 million broadband Internet users in the first half for a total of 45.1 million by the end of June,
The phone operator’s capital spending in the first half declined 9.1 percent to 20.8 billion yuan. Capital expenditure for the year will the 51 billion yuan, it said.
The first-half profit increase is the smallest since the company’s shares were listed in November 2002 on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
China Telecom said first-half profit, including connection fees of 2.5 billion yuan, fell to 14.1 billion yuan from 14.7 billion yuan a year earlier. Sales rose to 86.9 billion yuan from 84 billion yuan. The government stopped connection fees, which refer to the one-time charge of linking fixed-line users to the main network, in 2001. The charges were amortized over 10 years.
Source- http://www.bloomberg.com
Technorati : China, Mobile Telecom
Ice Rocket : China, Mobile Telecom
SK Telecom Cuts 3G Mobile Deal With China
SK Telecom, South Korea’s primary wireless operator, has teamed up with the Chinese government to jointly develop third-generation (3G) mobile technologies for the world’s most populous country. The Seoul-based carrier yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with China to cooperate in time division-synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA).
TD-SCDMA refers to China’s homegrown platform for 3G wireless telephony services, which the country looks to nurture as its major future mobile standard.
SK Telecom chief executive Kim Shin-bae said that the partnership amply demonstrates the company’s know-how and expertise in the telecom services.
“SK Telecom is the first foreign telecom service provider to establish a cooperative relationship with China on TD-SCDMA technologies. This signifies the full recognition of our technological prowess,” Kim said in a statement.
Under the hook-up, SK Telecom plans to deploy a TD-SCDMA experimental station in Pundang, south of Seoul, next year to carry out tests on the mobility-specific techniques.
Plus, the operator will establish a TD-SCDMA service center in China to pursue joint research in 3G multimedia services, value-added devices and platforms.
SK Telecom seeks to continue its business alliance with China, the country with the world’s biggest mobile customer base amounting to 380 million, in many fields other than TD-SCDMA.
“We have agreed on building a cooperative model with China for the telecom industry, for not only TD-SCDMA technologies but also beyond 3G standards,” SK Telecom spokesman Do Hoon said.
TD-SCDMAChina’s Datang Mobilecom has spearheaded the development of TD-SCDMA alongside such global powerhouses as Siemens and Samsung Electronics.
TD-SCDMA is one of three technologies that acquired recognition by the International Telecommunications Union as the next-generation mobile telecom standard.
The other two are CDMA2000, which SK Telecom commercially launched here in late 2000 for the first time in history, and wideband-CDMA.
TD-SCDMA allows communication of numerous subscribers by dividing a spectrum into time slots unlike other platforms, which use separate spectrums for wireless transmission and reception.
China has decided to select a TD-SCDMA technology-based 3G service provider before the 2008 Beijing Olympics and international behemoths are vying to join the project.
Up until now, Korean companies like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics mostly attempted to advance into the handset business of TD-SCDMA.
Samsung, the world’s third-largest cell phone maker, set up a joint venture for TD-SCDMA chipset development together with Datang Mobilecom and Philips.
LG Electronics, the No. 4 player, also established a venture start-up for chipsets, called Commit, alongside Datang and Texas Instruments.
Recently, TD-SCDMA handsets manufactured by Samsung and LG have passed tests ordered by the Chinese government.
Source- http://times.hankooki.com
Technorati : 3G, China, Mobile, SK Telecom
Ice Rocket : 3G, China, Mobile, SK Telecom
SK Telecom to Help China Develop 3G Mobile Service
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s largest mobile-phone operator, will help China develop its own standard for wireless networks, seeking access to the world’s biggest cell-phone market by subscribers.
The alliance is the first China’s government has signed with an overseas operator for the third-generation technology known as TD-SCDMA, which allows faster downloads of movies and music, the Seoul-based company said in a statement. SK Telecom bought $1 billion of bonds convertible into shares of China’s second- largest mobile-phone company in July.
China’s homegrown standard needs to win customers to compete with rival technologies developed by Nokia Oyj and Qualcomm Inc. SK Telecom, the world’s first provider of 3G services, joins Spain’s Telefonica SA and Hong Kong’s PCCW Ltd. in trying to access a market with more cell-phone users than the combined populations of the U.S. and Japan.
China “can benefit from the experience of a foreign operator,” said Kelvin Ho, a telecom analyst at Nomura International (Hong Kong) Ltd. The agreement may “help faster development of the TD-SCDMA standard in China.”
SK Telecom said last month when it bought bonds convertible into a 6.7 percent stake in China Unicom Ltd. that the two companies would cooperate in the development of handset and network technology and new services.
Shares of SK Telecom rose 1.1 percent to close at 189,500 won in Seoul. The stock has fallen 6.9 percent since the company announced the convertible bond purchase, compared with a 9.7 percent rise by the Kospi stock index in that period.
`Government Support’
As part of the agreement announced today, SK Telecom will test TD-SCDMA in South Korea by the second half of next year, the statement said. China plans to start the 3G service before the start of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, according to the statement.
SK Telecom expects its China business, into which SK Telecom has committed a great deal, to gain much momentum with the support of the Chinese government,” the company said.
China’s TD-SCDMA, or time division-synchronous code division multiple access, technology competes with wideband-CDMA, developed by companies including Nokia and Ericsson AB, and Qualcomm’s CDMA2000 as 3G standards.
In October 2000, SK Telecom became the world’s first company to start 3G mobile-phone services. A year later, NTT DoCoMo Inc. was the first operator to offer W-CDMA, the most common standard for the high-speed service.
Issue License
China’s government may issue its first 3G license within six months, China Netcom Group Corp. (Hong Kong) Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Zuo Xunsheng said in an interview in Hong Kong last week.
The Chinese regulator in February asked the parent companies of fixed-line operators China Netcom and China Telecom Corp. and China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest cell-phone operator by users, to conduct trials of the TD-SCDMA standard.
Companies may spend 80 billion yuan ($10 billion) on 3G networks in China in the first year licenses are issued, according to estimates by Beijing-based researcher BDA China Ltd.
China added 38.4 million mobile-phone users in the first seven months of this year for a total of 431.8 million, according to government data.
Source-http://www.bloomberg.com
Technorati : China, Mobile, SK Telecom
Ice Rocket : China, Mobile, SK Telecom
China’s mobile phone user base soars to 432m
The number of mobile phone users in China hit 431.8 million in July, a government agency, quoted in an InfoWorld Daily report, said.
The nation added 5.43 million new users in July, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.
China’s monthly subscriber growth also beat India, another fast growing mobile market. India added 5.28 million new mobile phone users in July, increasing its total to 111.2 million, the report also said.
India also faced a similar situation as China in that mobile services were prompting people to eschew fixed line services. In July, the number of fixed line users in India actually declined by 60,000, the regulator said.
While the number of fixed line users continued to grow in China, mobile phones were more popular. China counted 366.6 million fixed line subscribers by the end of July, up by just over a million from the previous month.
For every 100 people in China, 28 had a fixed line phone connection, while 32.7 subscribed to a mobile phone service, the ministry said.
China’s mobile user base was also nearly double that of the US, which stood at an estimated 218.2 million, the report further said.
Source- http://www.americasnetwork.com
China may issue 3G license in six months
Aug. 28, 2006 (China Knowledge) – The Chinese government could issue its first 3G license some time in the next six months, according to China Netcom Group Corp. (Hong Kong) Ltd. CEO Zuo Xunsheng.In an interview with Bloomberg, Zuo reportedly said: “We can’t drag on any longer if China expects to provide 3G services by the 2008 Olympics.”
China will be hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and has been making efforts to improve various facilities around the country in preparation for the epochal event.
Among the government’s plans is the rollout of a high-speed wireless network. However, the government has so far been having difficulties settling on a standard for wireless network operations throughout the country.
At present, China’s government has yet to issue any 3G licenses and industry analysts and spectators have despaired of the government coming up with anything within the year after a false start in February when the country’s regulator of telecoms services asked China Netcom, China Telecom, and China Mobile to conduct trials of its locally-developed TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) standard.
The trials, which were supposed to have been completed in July, have since been extended to continue till October this year in order to test usage of the service among the three operators, Zuo said in the interview.
China Netcom is the country’s second-largest phone company and operates in the world’s largest mobile market by users – China had 431.8 million mobile subscribers at the end of July according to government figures.
Source- http://www.chinaknowledge.com
Technorati : 3G, China, China Mobile, China Netcom, China Telecom, Mobile
Ice Rocket : 3G, China, China Mobile, China Netcom, China Telecom, Mobile
Razr takes market share from top competitor Nokia
STAMFORD, Conn. — Motorola Inc. took market share from larger competitor Nokia in the second quarter, helped by sales of the Razr, Slvr and Ming phones, according to a study released Thursday.Motorola’s market share rose to 21.9 percent, the highest level in more than five years, from 20.3 percent in the first quarter, researcher Gartner Inc. said. Finland-based Nokia’s share fell to 33.6 percent from 34 percent.
Schaumburg-based Motorola, whose unit sales growth has outpaced that of Nokia for five straight quarters, was the fastest-growing handset-maker in the most recent quarter.
Its Motofone, shipping next month, will help Motorola challenge the dominance of Nokia in markets such as India and China, said Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst.
“Motorola gained across the board,” Milanesi said. “The Razr is coming down in price and broadening its target market, and the Motofone combines usability and design at an affordable price.”
Global mobile phone unit sales rose 18 percent in the second quarter, to 229 million units, from a year earlier, Gartner said.
Motorola sold 50.2 million phones, a gain of 46 percent from the year-ago quarter, Gartner said. The Razr and Slvr lured buyers in the U.S. and Europe, while the Ming camera phone boosted demand in China, Milanesi said.
Source- http://www.sun-sentinel.com
Technorati : Mobile, Motorola, Nokia
Ice Rocket : Mobile, Motorola, Nokia
Ozura Mobile Chosen as Excite Japan’s First International Distribution Partner
Ozura Mobile, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nextnation Communication and a leading international publisher and developer of mobile entertainment, today announced that it has been chosen as Excite Japan’s first international mobile game distribution partner.
Singapore (PRWEB) August 23, 2006 — Ozura Mobile, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nextnation Communication and a leading international publisher and developer of mobile entertainment, today announced that it has been chosen as Excite Japan’s first international mobile game distribution partner.
Excite Japan, one of Japan’s largest web portals and mobile game providers, is granting Ozura Mobile the distribution rights for its premium mobile game titles. Ozura Mobile plans to make these games available through its extensive network of distribution channels consisting of major mobile operators and distribution partners in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, China, India and the United Kingdom.
“Ozura Mobile has been chosen as the preferred international mobile game distributor due to its well established presence in the global mobile gaming industry,” said Ozura Mobile’s Chief Executive Officer, Lion Peh.
Peh added that Ozura Mobile will be effectively offering more than 150 million mobile subscribers in its network the chance to play some of the most sought after mobile games today.
“This partnership with Excite Japan clearly reflects growing international recognition of Ozura Mobile’s cutting edge technology in the development of mobile gaming platforms. Our mobile gaming platform, FunlogiXâ„¢, is one of the most sought after platforms in the mobile gaming industry as it is highly compatible with games from all over the world ranging from Japanese to Russian origin developed using different development tools,” commented Peh.
He further revealed that over the next 3 years, Ozura Mobile expects a boost in revenue of up to USD20 million from global sales via this partnership.
Informa forecasts mobile gaming sales will generate USD$7.2bn a year worldwide by 2011, growing from the USD$2.4bn sold in 2006. The international provider of specialist information also predicts that Asia Pacific, which dominates mobile games sales, will account for nearly half the industry by 2011.
“The rapid revolution in the mobile gaming market, especially in the Asia Pacific, represents a huge potential for us. We have recently launched Indonesia’s first mobile gaming community with Indosat and we are soon to roll out more of our deployment programs in Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, China and Hong Kong. This will be another win for us in tapping into the substantial global gaming market,” said Peh.
To date, Ozura Mobile has published and aggregated an extensive compendium of games through its distribution network worldwide, representing over 2,000 game titles in over 130 countries. With its propriety gaming platform, FunlogiXâ„¢, Ozura Mobile also provides its state- of- the- art community based mobile gaming technology to mobile operators worldwide.
About Excite Japan Co. Ltd
Excite Japan Co., Ltd is one of the leading Japan-based Internet service provider. The Company has five business segments. The Advertising segment is engaged in the sale of advertising space on its Website to enterprises. The Content Service segment offers community services, music download services, online games and others. The Broadband Service segment provides Internet access services, mainly broadband services to general consumers. The Electronic Commerce (EC) segment is engaged in the sale, auction and shopping of commodities through Internet systems. The Others segment is involved in the development of Internet systems, as well as the management of fan clubs and the provision of services for beauty salon services through Internet. Excite Japan is a subsidiary of Itochu Corporation. Headquartered in Tokyo, the Company has three consolidated subsidiaries and three associated companies.
About Ozura Mobile
Ozura Mobile is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nextnation Communication Berhad and is a leading international developer and publisher for mobile games and game developer engine to carriers, aggregators, mobile phone manufacturers and service providers. The company creates games for the mobile phones based on the J2ME, BREW and Symbian platforms. Ozura Mobile’s games are available all over the world through its distribution network of partners spanning across 130 countries. It is expected that the growth of mobile phones supporting these platforms will exceed one billion units worldwide in 2008.
About Nextnation
Nextnation’ a mobile application service provider’ enables businesses and individuals to access’ connect’ and transact across today’s complex global mobile networks. Its core product MINDCEPâ„¢ Platform is a mobile multimedia communication platform’ facilitating and enabling mobile data transmission worldwide using WAP’ MMS’ SMS and Java technologies. MINDCEPâ„¢ is connected to some of the largest premium messaging networks in the world in order to offer a broad range of services from content distribution to mobile m-commerce and place the company at the forefront of this rapidly growing messaging market. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.nextnationnet.com.
Source- http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb427786.htm
Technorati : Japan, Mobile, Ozura
Ice Rocket : Japan, Mobile, Ozura
China’s mobile-phone user base rose to 431.80 million at end of July
There were 431.80 million subscribers of mobile communication services in China, as of the end of last month, increasing by 5.43 million from a month earlier and accounting for 32.7% of the country’s population at that time, according to statistics published on August 23 by China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) on its Chinese-language website.
Also at the end of July, there were 366.60 million subscribers of fixed telecommunication networks in China, translating into a user density of 28.0 %.
Last month, mobile-phone subscribers in China sent 35.54 billion short messages, averaging 2.67 short messages per phone number a day.
Source- http://www.digitimes.com
