China's mobile phone industry or cell phone industry has high growth rate, raising its share on the global mobile phone market. During 2007, 600 million mobile phones were made in China which accounted for over 50% of the global production.
History
In 214 B.C., Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, started wireless communication to alert the invasion of the Xiongnus using the smoke signals, over the Great Wall just completed
In 1995, wireless telephone communication in the modern sense started by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of China, using GSM technology. A nation-wide network was completed in the following year.
In 2000, the fixed telephone company (China Telecom) and two cell phone telephone companies (China Mobile and China Unicom) were spun off from the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
In 2002, the fixed telephone company was split into two: China Netcom for North China and China Telecom for South China
Until 2008, China's cell phone service was provided by the three companies:
GSM service from China Mobile
GSM and CDMA service (begun in 2002) from China Unicom
PHS service from the two fixed phone companies: China Netcom and China Telecom
In 2008, another reorganization of the telecommunications industry was made a year before the Third generation (3G) service was granted.
Mobile phone service providers
After the 2008 reorganization of China's telecommunication industry, there are now three cell phone service providers.
China Mobile
China Mobile continues the old China Mobile's GSM service, absorbed China Railway Communication, and began 3G service using TD-SCDMA, China's own technology.
China Unicom
China Unicom continues the old China Unicom's GSM service, absorbed the old China Netcom's network of fixed telephones in the north of the Yangtze River in China, and started 3G service using W-CDMA technology.
China Telecom
China Telecom continues PHS service of the old China Netcom and China Telecom, continues the old China Telecom's network of fixed telephones in the south of the Yangtze River, and began 3G service using CDMA2000 technology.
Mobile phone industry
Wireless communication is regulated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The mobile phone industry in China has grown to become a large industry, including research of new technology, manufacturing of cell phones and building of telephone networks, participated by not only the domestic companies but also the foreign companies, such as:
Datang Telecom (Research and development of China's 3G TD-SCDMA technology)
Huawei Technologies
ZTE
Alcatel-Lucent
Ericsson
Nokia-Siemens Networks
Huawei Technologies is expected to surpass Nokia-Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent to become the second largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, after Ericsson, in 2009.
ZTE and China Mobile have done turnkey mobile phone network projects in Pakistan, Ethiopia, etc.
Domestics sales
The domestic sales of cell phone made a breakthrough of 100 million in China in 2006.
In 2007, the domestic sales of cell phone in china were 190 million, increased by 74% as compared with 2007. The impetus mainly came from the rapid growth of new mobile phone users and old customers' upgrading demands. Of 190 million cell phones, 140 million were made through formal channels, while the rest were made through informal channels such as smuggling, counterfeiting and renovating.
Sales volume
For year of 2007, sales volume had reached about 23 billion USD, increased by 17% as compared with 2006. The drop of cell phones' average price made the increment of sales volume lower than the increment of sales because mobile communication company vigorously promoted the sales of cell phones binding to their service which have lower price.
Export volume
The export volume of China's cell phones added up to a record high of 385 million in 2006, increased by 69.3% as compared with 2005. In 2007, this figure reached 483 million, increased by 125.45% as compared with 2006. As far as 2006, the export volume had reached 31.214 billion USD, increased by 52.47% as compared with 2005. The export volume of 2007 was 35.6 billion dollars, increased by 114.01% as compared with 2006.
Development trend
The latest 2–3 years' development trend (2005–2008) has showed that the mainland market is developing in two directions, one of which is the extremely low price cell phones in emerging rural market; the other is multimedia cell phones with diverse functions such as mobile television, MP3 and GPS.
Pricing
China's cell phone market is dominated by products with price under 2000 RMB yuan (about 290 dollars). Products at this price have accounted for 60% of the whole cell phone market, competing with China's local brands, informal cell phones and international brands.
Some features of China's mobile phone
All cell phone service must be prepaid. Pre-payment can be made by buying a card (50 or 100 yuan) and calling the cell phone company, or through commercial banks. When out of town, pre-payment is not easy, usually solved by calling a friend in your own town to add money.
There is a clear distinction of cell phone and cell phone service in China, unlike some countryies such as Japan where the cell phone is sold by and locked to the cell phone service companies. This tradition was broken by the 2009 introduction of Apple Inc.'s iPhone introduction.
Stealing of cell phones and therefore SIM cards is quite common. When your telephone is stolen, go visit the cell phone service company to cancel the previous card, at the same time retaining the previous phone number and pre-payment.
A short message (SMS) or duanxin, usually 0.10 yuan per message (up to 160 alphabetic or 70 Chinese characters), can be sent to any other cell phones across different cell phone service companies, GSM, CDMA or PHS.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) or caixin is also available, usually 0.3 yuan per message (up to 50 kilobytes).
Calling, usually 5 yuan per month, is an additional service by which the called party can send as the ring tone to the calling party the music (or any kind of sound) that the called party likes . Usually detested by foreigners, but loved by the Chinese young.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Growth of mobile broadband and the emergence of 4G
Although mobile phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet, it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G coverage in the mid 2000s that specialised devices appeared to access the mobile internet. The first such devices, known as "dongles", plugged directly into a computer through the USB port. Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router" such as the Novatel MiFi, which makes 3G internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi, rather than just to a single computer via a USB plug-in.
Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbooks' footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and the Nook from Barnes & Noble, had already become available with embedded wireless internet, and Apple Computer had announced plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad tablet devices beginning that Fall.
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard (offered in the U.S. by Sprint) and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.
One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing packet switching over internet, LAN or WAN networks via VoIP.
Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbooks' footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and the Nook from Barnes & Noble, had already become available with embedded wireless internet, and Apple Computer had announced plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad tablet devices beginning that Fall.
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard (offered in the U.S. by Sprint) and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.
One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing packet switching over internet, LAN or WAN networks via VoIP.
Third generation: High speed IP data networks
As the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to utilise mobile phones in their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data services (such as access to the internet) was growing. Furthermore, experience from fixed broadband services showed there would also be an ever increasing demand for greater data speeds. The 2G technology was nowhere near up to the job, so the industry began to work on the next generation of technology known as 3G. The main technological difference that distinguishes 3G technology from 2G technology is the use of packet switching rather than circuit switching for data transmission. In addition, the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).
Inevitably this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol whilst retaining backwards compatibility:
the introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s.
protocols that would decrease connection establishment time.
the ability for more than one mobile to share the same time slot.
the introduction of QoS flags.
All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.
The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.
During the development of 3G systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.
The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible, with companies such as RealNetworks and Disney among the early pioneers in this type of offering.
In the mid 2000s an evolution of 3G technology begun to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9 of the 3GPP standards.
By the end of 2007 there were 295 Million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over 120 Billion dollars of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation. Earlier in the decade there were doubts about whether 3G might happen, and also whether 3G might become a commercial success. By the end of 2007 it had become clear that 3G was a reality and was clearly on the path to become a profitable venture.
Inevitably this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol whilst retaining backwards compatibility:
the introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s.
protocols that would decrease connection establishment time.
the ability for more than one mobile to share the same time slot.
the introduction of QoS flags.
All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.
The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.
During the development of 3G systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.
The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible, with companies such as RealNetworks and Disney among the early pioneers in this type of offering.
In the mid 2000s an evolution of 3G technology begun to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9 of the 3GPP standards.
By the end of 2007 there were 295 Million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over 120 Billion dollars of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation. Earlier in the decade there were doubts about whether 3G might happen, and also whether 3G might become a commercial success. By the end of 2007 it had become clear that 3G was a reality and was clearly on the path to become a profitable venture.
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