www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Samsung Electronics, world’s second largest mobile handset manufacturer, has reported to have attained the number one position in the Chinese 3G handset market. The Korean firm topped China’s TD-SCDMA market, holding a 23.6% in first seven months of 2009, followed by DOPOD with a 19.4% share, ZTE with a 16% share, COOLPAD with a 15.8% share.
LG Electronics stood at fifth position with an 11.6% share in the TD-SCDMA market.
Samsung also led the CDMA-2000 handset market for the time frame of May’09- JUly’09 with a market share of 44.1%, followed by LG with a 30.5% share. While, Nokia, the world’s No. 1 handset maker, ranked fourth with a 4.7% percent share in the market.
The WCDMA market was held by Sony Ericsson with a 62.7% share from May to July. Nokia placed second with a 16.3% share, followed by Motorola with 9.5% and Samsung with 7.6%.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: ZTE, the Chinese equipment and handset vendor, is reportedly grounding its feet more firmly in USA mobile market now. The company which already has established relationships with Sprint Nextel and MetroPCS, launched a new global roaming USB modem with Verizon Wireless. The vendor is further developing a handset based on Android OS for the Asian markets which it also intends to bring to the USA mobile market in collaboration with carriers, along with other high-end devices. ZTE, further, plans to be the first to offer LTE devices in the United States.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: ZTE Corp, one of the world’s leading equipment supplier and network solution provider has tied up with the Kenyan mobile operator, Safaricom to launch the solar-powered mobile phone in Kenya. The handset will be dubbed as Simu ya Solar, is manufactured from recycled materials and has a built-in solar panel that charges the phone using the sun’s rays.
The launch of the handset will enbale Safaricom to meet the needs of rural residents who have no direct access to electricity and have had to pay for charging services.
The price of the handset will be reportedly about US$39. Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph said that solar power is cheap, green and renewable, and that the company is keen on developing green business processes and products.
The new handset will come in handy not only in rural areas of the country but also in urban areas, where electricity is rationed, the CEO added.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Zain Malawi has reportedly raised the cost of its low cost ZTE and Huawei handsets which were at K1,499 to K3,499. Zain Sales and Distribution Director. Saulos Chilima said the subsidy was aimed at increasing rural penetration of mobile telecommunication at a budget of K840 million.
“The program has achieved its objective and we would now like to focus on other initiatives especially network expansion in a quest to offer quality service to our customers,” Chilima said adding that the subsidy had helped boost customer base to 0.5million.
He further said the operator will now focus on network upgradation in terms of capacity in order to reduce congestion.
“We need to install some software upgrades which could be mostly done at night or during weekends starting today as part of improving the capacity,” he said.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: ZTE Corporation, a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions today announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with WILLCOM, the fourth largest mobile operator in Japan. Under the agreement, ZTE has partnered with WILLCOM to supply its 3G Data Card MF633 (WILLCOM’s model is HX003ZT) to the Japan market, bringing high-speed Internet users access to rich 3G network applications.
Since making its debut in the Japan market in 2008, ZTE’s 3G Data Card products have been adopted by JCI.ZTE’s partnership with WILLCOM marks another significant business expansion into a high-end overseas market. As a top four mobile operator, and the largest Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) operatorin Japan, WILLCOM has 4.6 million users and commands great influence in the local market. (more…)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: ZTE Corp. has signed a contract to build a commercial UMTS network in Belarus for the Byelorussian Telecommunication Network (BeST) subsidiary of Turkcell, the third largest European mobile operator. The UMTS network will serve mobile service operator life:), the trading name for BeST.
The UMTS network will provide fast network access to life:) subscribers and enhance user 3G services experience. In addition to voice communication, life:) provides its subscribers with SMS and MMS services, GPRS and EDGE data transfer services. The life:) network will use ZTE’s industry-leading SDR solution to deliver high speed HSPA data services and enable an easy evolution to LTE. (more…)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Zapp, the Romanian mobile operator, will launch 3G+ network in August’09. The network was developed by operator in partnership with ZTE. The network will offer internet speeds of up to 21.6 Mbps. The 3G+service will initially be available in the Bucharest capital area, providing data transfer speeds of up to 21. 6 Mbps for download and 5.8 Mbps for upload.
Zapp, at present, is also upgrading its 3G network and intends coverage expansion from 23 to 63 cities. Additionally, the operator is will expand the coverage of its high-speed EV-DO network by 25%. Zapp aims to expand its mobile data services coverage to 80 percent of the country’s population.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: ZTE Corporation and Greek mobile operator Cosmote have reportedly rolled-out ZTE’s first HSPA+ USB datacard in Greece. The new ZTE MF662 datacard modem supports download and upload speeds of up to 21.6Mbps and 5.76Mbps respectively. No information was released on actual speeds obtainable on Cosmote’s network.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd, the new entrant in the Indian mobile market, has reported inked a $70 million loan agreement with Bank of China Limited (under security of China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation Sinosure) as it makes investments in network expansion across India.
The loan will be used to source supplies from ZTE which has been selected by the operators to build its CDMA network. The loan will be for a period of eight years with three years of moratorium on principle repayment.
Speaking about the deal, Mr. Sergey Savchenko, CFO of Sistema Shyam TeleServices said, ”The deal with Bank of China is one of the many steps that we are taking to add impetus to our plan of establishing the MTS brand in India and differentiate positioning on parameters of robust infrastructure and quality network. This is the first facility arranged with an International bank and I believe that it offers a way for other large and beneficial agreements in the future.”