Its called a dual-standby capability, but wags have dubbed it the "just in case" capability. Fancy a GSM phone that can also work on TD-SCDMA, China's would-be 3G standard? I though not.
Nevertheless, Chinese equipment manufacturer ZTE has bravely produced a mobile phone for a market and a network that do not yet exist.
The ZTE U350
is claimed to be the world's first TD-SCDMA/GSM "dual-mode,
dual-standby" handset. That means you can put a call on hold in one
network and take a separate call on the other.
Of course, the dual-standby capability is pretty academic today as no commercial TD-SCDMA services are operating in China -- or anywhere else for that matter.
While the rest of the world has opted for one of the two tried-and-tested western 3G standards, WCDMA or CDMA2000, China has held back the award of 3G licences to allow -- some would say force -- its domestic telecoms industry to develop a home-grown alternative.
China's past attempts to develop global technology standards have so far proved fruitless, according to the China Economic Quarterly ($).
The promotion of a home-grown 3G standard, far from benefiting domestic manufacturers could actually put them at a disadvantage, argues the 'paper:
While the domestic market may be large enough to sustain a Chinese standard at home, it would likely lead to the collapse of handset makers' competitiveness abroad."
TD-SCDMA has been under development for a long time and there have been a lot of false dawns. But could it finally be ready for launch?
ZTE's announcement of the U350 suggests that it is, although from the photo (above) we can't tell whether its a real working phone or a mock-up.
The Times believes the award of the 3G licences could come "as early as the end of this year", although I remember reading similar predictions in 2005.
For more on the long-running TD-SCDMA saga, see this earlier EngagingChina post.
ZTE may not be a household name in the west, but it could soon become one.
It has traditionally been more focused on China's domestic telecoms market than its larger rival Huawei Technologies. But ZTE now exports mobile phones and networking gear in a large number of foreign markets and, in 2005 , international sales grew 68% to 7.7bn yuan, just over a third of overall revenue.
ZTE has sold more than 10m phones based on the CDMA standard, the rival cellular technology to GSM that is widely used in the US and elsewhere. In 2005, ZTE sold more CDMA handsets abroad than in China, with 2m sold in India alone.
To date, the company's export drive has had most success in developing countries such as India or Nigeria, where it has built a handset factory.
But it now wants to penetrate mainstream markets in the west and recently won a deal with an unnamed Italian operator for high-speed wireless data cards, according to Reuters.
ZTE hopes to do a lot more business in Europe but it was slow to enter the market and arch-rival Huawei is now well entrenched as the "price leader".
Huawei's latest coup is a deal to supply 3G radio access equipment to Vodafone's Spanish subsidiary, which has 1.2m 3G customers. For more on how Huawei is flexing its muscles in Europe see this EngagingChina post.
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