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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

3G in China

Market development

1. Step one - standard

Chinese market, IP, Diversity of suppliers. multiple standards presents challenges but also opportunities to the suppliers at different level of the food chain.
TD-SCDMA go abroad by directing/influencing suppliers, technology via massive Chinese market.

2. Step one - network (200 billions RMB in 2009 alone)
Three carriers are being licensed for 3G network infrastructure construction in Jan 2009:

China Mobile - TD-SCDMA
China Telcom - CDMA2000
China Unicom - WCDMA

HuaWei, ZTE will be playing critical roles in infra-structure construction, so as many third party suppliers.

3. Step three - UE
In the next 3 years, 3G mobile phone, data card etc. is projected/planned at 400 billions RMB, more than 40 billions GBP.

Diversity of suppliers

Chipset: Icera, Qualcomm
Device: All the big names + local device vendors

China Mobile joined Google's Open Mobile platform alliance, adopting Android as mobile OS. Very much like DOCOMO in Japan.

WCDMA - G1, iPhone, N97 (Nokia), X1 (Sony Ericsson), HTC Touch HD
CDMA2000 - Blackberry, D90 (ZTE), ZN4 (Motorola), SCH-U940(Samsung)
TD-SCDMA - L800t (Motorola), S700 (Dupuda), U981 (ZTE), TD800 (Lenovo)

4. Step four - service provider, content provider
Application vendors
Value-added service provider

Technical stuff

UE


Baseband processor

Network infrastructure - & integration with each other
Node B implementaion
Integrate existing network

Challengess
  • Wireless Communication Channel, multiple modulation and channel coding standard co-exist (Soft modem)
  • Packet Network, modified TCP/IP implmentation on top of MAC and link layer control in application processor.
  • Small packaging and integrated fabric
Products
Data card - Qualcomm's Gobi, Icera's soft modem
Mobile device - reference design

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