In a telephone interview with Reuters, Motorola's director of global strategy on 3G, Bob Schukai said that if China does adopt the domestically-developed TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous CDMA), Motorola's best business plan would be working through local partnership deals to draw on local expertise.
Motorola is the top cell phone seller in China today, although Nokia leads worldwide, and Samsung recently slid past Motorola to the number 2 spot in Asia market share.
3G cellphones are widely seen as the next level for mobile telecommunications. Given the size of China's market at 221 million users currently and growing by 4 million new subscribers a month, making it the world's largest single cellular market, 3G phones in China hold much promise. China has commercial plans for the local TD-SCDMA standard, but the European standard WCDMA (wideband code division access) and the U.S.-based Qualcomm CDMA2000 (code division multiple access) standard are more widely used in China for the present.
No talks have started yet.
There are an estimated 800 plus handset models competing for a piece of the action, with foreign companies coming up against local players like Ningbo Bird and TCL International willing to cut profit margins for sales, Reuters reported.
Some local cellphone players have already announced 3G handset plans, such as unlisted Huawei Technologies and China Putian Corp. One completely locally developed 3G phone that uses TD-SCDMA has already left the labs to be developed commercially.
Motorola already supplies 3G handsets that use WCDMA to the European arm of Hong Kong-based Hutchinson Whampoa, along with Japan's NEC. Hutchinson recently blamed delays in handset supplies for setbacks in its aggressive European 3G investments, Reuters added.
Motorola said it could ship similar handsets to China if WCDMA wins the 3G race.
Motorola has more video-enabled 3G handsets than other cellphone manufacturers, with three on sale in Europe and a fourth in the works. The company hopes to sell at least 500,000 to a million 3G handsets worldwide this year.
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