By Liu Xiaofeng

Judging from the structure of the smartphone market in 2011, Chinese smart terminals brands such as ZTE and Huawei seem to be on a trend of full-scale explosion. Having been suppressed by foreign brands for a long time, Chinese smartphones begin to take a solid footstep in the smartphone market by working closely with telecommunication operators and making full use of their "Chinese characteristics", breaking the old pattern of market that has long been dominated by foreign brands. According to industrial participants, Chinese brands are rising in the 3G era.

According to media report, the Coolpad 7260, one of China Unicom's 1000-Yuan smartphones, created a record sales of 110,000 units three days after it was put on the market, refreshing the shipment volume record of 1000-Yuan Chinese 3G smartphones, scoring a victory in its first battle. Also, this number gives the market more expectation for Unicom's 8 new models of 4.0 series "WO 3G" 1000-Yuan smartphones that are co-launched by China Unicom and technology-intensive Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.

It is learned that these new 4.0 series 1000-Yuan phones boast three major features: big, fast, and HD. Big screens, previous 3.5-inch screens are replaced by 4-inch screens; fast processing speed, previous 600MHz CPUs are replaced by CPUs that are higher than 800MHz now; fast upload speed, supporting HSUPV; fast running speed, memory upgrades from 256M in the past to 512M now. High-definition picture taking, camera are required to increase from 2-3 million pixels to 3-5 million pixels.

According to person from China Unicom, the re-defined 1000-Yuan smart terminals introduced by China Unicom in May, 2011, and the numerous star terminals subsequently co-produced by China Unicom and Chinese mobile phones manufacturers have won excellent market response. Among these products, ZTE's V880 scored daily sales of more than 10,000 units and monthly sales of more than 300,000 units. After months of promotion, the 1000-Yuan smartphones strategy remains effective, propelling the fast growth of China Unicom's 3G subscribers.

In November, Unicom's net growth of 3G subscribers was as high as 3.384 million with total 3G subscribers amounting to 36.534 million, making it the operator with the fastest 3G subscriber growth rate. This indicates that 1000-Yuan phones have accumulated significant subscriber base in the market and have established some brand effect. Presently, China Unicom makes use of the favorable conditions and defines the standards of 4.0 series 1000-Yuan smartphones, and offers high subsidy for the newly defined 4.0 series phones, with the purpose of making deployment in the middle-end market and grab a say of Chinese smart terminals in advance.

According to industrial participants, "users-friendly price and high-end experience" is the key to the success of China Unicom's customized 1000-Yuan smartphones. Consumers' favor for China Unicom's customized terminals comes from its preferential subsidy policy, rather high-end configuration, and the user experience brought by the WCDMA network. Market research statistics show that the number of 3G subscribers worldwide in 2011 approached 1.3 billion, of which WCDMA subscribers accounted for 76 percent. In China, as per Otober 2011, WCDMA smartphones accounted for 69 percent of all 3G smartphones. Currently, China has become the largest smartphone market in the world, with nearly 70 percent of the phones being WCMDA. It is thus quite clear that WCDMA mobile phones are the mainstream in China and even all over the world. 

Industrial participants point out that with the rapid development of smart terminals in the 3G era, the competition pattern of the mobile phone market will become even more complicated. In the meantime, the industry thinks positively of the marriage between domestic mobile phones and China Unicom's WCDMA. Amidst the fierce competition of the terminal market globally, however, Chinese smartphones need to understand the market better, and puts more efforts in products R&D and brand image improvement, hoping to evolve from the "copycat" image to a national brand as soon as possible.