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By Liu Xiaofeng
As far as the global wireless communication industry is concerned, if the biggest surprise in 2009 is the fresh strength and huge commercial opportunity brought by 3G's overall initiation in China, then it's no doubt that the year of 2010 deserves more expectation - the 3G user transfer and technical evolution that develop at top speed, the thriving market in China, the colorful intelligent mobile phones and integrated terminals, the intelligent notebooks and cloud computing that aim at the future, as well as various modes of application stores, all of them are conceiving the vitality and hope brought by the spring of 3G.
Statistics from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that by 2009, China's three operators have invested RMB160,9 billion yuan, established 325,000 3G base stations, and owned over 15 million 3G users in China.
The three major operators have realized rapid expansion of 3G network coverage. China Telecom's EV - DO network has realized nationwide coverage, China UNICOM's WCDMA network and China Mobile's TD - SCDMA have covered 238 cities and 284 cities respectively in the end of 2009. Additionally, MIIT predicts that the three operators will invest RMB450 billion yuan within 2.5 to 3 years, and each will develop 50 - 80 million 3G users at least, and the total number of 3G users will reach 240 million. And the direct investment of RMB450 billion yuan will drive the economic aggregate up to more than RMB1 trillion yuan.
A telecom survey and research institute forecasts that the sales volume of China's 3G mobile phones will soar from 9 million sets in 2009 to 270 million sets in 2013 with the average compound growth rate as high as 136 percent. Along with the joint efforts of operators and mobile phone manufacturers, China will soon become the biggest country in selling intelligent mobile phones in the world.
From operators to mobile phone manufacturers, PC manufacturers and internet enterprises, a batch of local enterprises walk to the leading front of the world by means of the regional advantage of China's 3G construction.
China Mobile has taken charge in developing oPhone platform. Such chip manufacturers as Qualcomm Incorporated and Spreadtrum Communications Inc, and such terminal manufacturers as Lenovo Mobile and Dopod Communication Corp have become the members of China Mobile's oPhone camp.
China Mobile's TD has invited public bidding for three times, and Chinese enterprises represented by Datang Telecom Technology Co., Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd and ZTE Corporation have acquired over 80 percent of the market share, occupying an absolute leading position. In the public bidding invitation of 3G network construction by China Telecom and China UNICOM, Chinese enterprises have also acquired more than 50 percent of the share. Through participating 3G construction and technical development, Made in China has testified its own compositive strength.
The latest statistics shows that according to sales amount, Huawei has become the second largest telecom equipment supplier in the world in the third quarter of 2009, and the gap between Huawei and Ericsson, the largest telecom equipment supplier in the world, is further narrowing on the market share. Another industrial giant ZTE has grown up as the fifth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world in the third quarter of 2009, and is expected to ascend into the top three within three and five years.
The history of 2G has testified that technologies cannot be exchanged with the market. 3G needs a new idea, that is, to lead standards, technologies and products with the advantages in demand market. It can be expected that the rapid development of China's 3G market will further drive the thriving of China's communication industrial chain in 2010.
The integrated data from GSA and CDG, two most authoritative technical unions in the world, shows that presently, the number of 3G users in the globe has exceeded 885 million with the annual growth rate of more than 29 percent, and more than 80 percent of operators in the world have supplied 3G service currently. A British consultancy institute even forecasts that the total number of 3G users in the globe is expected to increase to around 2.4 billion in 2013.
The Asia and Pacific Region represented by China has become a highlight of 3G growth in 2009. An international institute forecasts that Southeast Asia is expected to become, only next to West Europe and North America, the third largest market over the world in the next five years in 3G terminal field. The sales volume of 3G terminals in Southeast Asia and Pacific Region keeps a rapid growth momentum, and the trend in transferring from 2G to 3G is very obvious. Operators have launched feature mobile phones with multiple types successively and supplied the applications and services closely related to the local market.
Meanwhile, the increasingly emerging of 3G terminals and data application has boosted the increasingly growth of users' demand on high-speed mobile broadband, making the busy 3G technical evolution expected to be accelerated further. Such multi-carrier technologies as EV - DO revision B (the upgrade technology of CDMA2000) and HSPA (the upgrade technology of WCDMA), which can provide higher data transmit speed and faster response time, have become the focus in wireless industry. Due to the lower cost of upgrading multi-carrier technologies, operators have not to change the existed network equipments or buy extra frequency spectrum in order to realize a data transmission speed approaching to that of the LTE (4G transmission technology). Such an advantage is especially important against the current background of globally economic slowdown and operators' more prudent investment.
By the end of 2015, the number of HSPA and HSPA users all over the world will increase to 1.1 billion. Statistics from GSA shows that currently, 54 operators in the world have deployed or declared to deploy HSPA network, including 26 HSPA commercial networks having been deployed in 19 countries. HSPA has become one of the choices of such globally mainstream mobile operators as Telstra, Vodafone Group, O2, EMOBILE and TelusBell on the way to mobile broadband.
As one of the core forces in the commercial application of EV - DO, China Telecom has made great efforts to invest on EV - DO network construction and actively piloted the network upgrade of EV - DO revision A. China Telecom has cooperated with such equipment manufacturers as ZTE, Huawei and Alcatel Lucent Shanghai Bell and finished the lab test for revision B, and the outdoor tests have been implemented successively. Meanwhile, it is planned that the commercial network will be deployed in such big cities as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu in 2010. |
