China Mobile + Apple?

China Mobile + Apple?: "

China Mobile may begin selling the iPhone 5 in September, reported the Shanghai Daily and repeated by Reuters. But the deals that Apple’s Tim Cook was making in China this week probably won’t result in products by September, says Fortune.

The aggregate number of mobile subscribers of the three main telecom operators (China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom) stood at approximately 823 million as of the end of November 2010.

While China now has nearly 900 million subscribers, currently only 74 million have access to 3G networks, says Fortune. China Mobile leads with a 3G share of 45%, while China Unicom and China Telecom had 30% and 25%, respectively. Most mobile users in China are still using 2G phones.

China Mobile controls a huge 70 percent market share of China’s total mobile sector, according to Wireless Intelligence, but their percent of 3G connections is far less than the other two operators. China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network is why

Apple has a deal with only one of China’s three largest carriers, — China Unicom — the country’s second largest, according to Fortune.

• China Unicom, the 2nd largest in China and the world’s third-biggest mobile provider. It has a (GSM) license to expand its business to 3G telecommunication.
  


• China Telecom, the 3rd largest mobile telecommunication provider in China with 43 million mobile subscribers, and has a nationwide CDMA business.
  


• China Mobile, is the world’s largest mobile phone operator with over 600 million subscribers. Its 3G network utilizes the TD-SCDMA — which is incompatible with Apple’s current generation of iPhones. China Mobile’s 4G network will utilizes the TD-LTE standard.
  

China Mobile has announced that it will carry Apple’s 4G iPhones when a LTE (long-term evolution) version is ready. When that happens is anybody’s guess.

But TD-LTE chipsets are being readied by Qualcomm, Sequans, Huawei, LG, Samsung and others.

Unpaired frequencies, used by TD-LTE networks, are by nature asymetrical. China and India say Time Division Multiplexing handles data-intensive communications more efficiently. Frequency Division LTE networks, such as those used by Verizon and AT&T in the United States, waste channel capacity just “listening”, when nothing is being transmitted.

The company is testing TD-LTE in 6 cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen. Telecom giants such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE, have participated in technical trials of TD-LTE technology with China Mobile since the end of 2008.- China Mobile’s Chairman, Wang Jianzhou, has said that Apple will support a TD-LTE phone.

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