Andre Yoskowitz
28 May 2007 15:27
According to company officials, the world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, expects to begin selling phones for China's 3G mobile technology TD-SCDMA when the network is up and running in early 2008.
"Currently we see that there will be market need from the first half of 2008. Hence, we will have some kind of offering on the market," said Thomas Jonsson, Nokia's spokesman in China.
Earlier this year, pre-commercial testing of the TD-SCDMA standard was extended to 10 cities from the original 5 it was tested on last year.
Analysts have called the trial extension a "soft launch" of sorts, one that is aimed at local phone makers instead of foreign companies who are focused on the popular CDMA and CDMA2000 standards.
Ericsson, Nortel and Motorola have also jumped onto the TD-SCDMA standard, hoping for a piece of the expected $10 billion USD worth of network equipment orders.
The industry is still waiting for the official launch of 3G licenses in China, but analysts fear that date could be pushed back to 2008.
Source:
Yahoo!