Skip to main content

China: 2006 Too Early for 3G Mobile

National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) macroeconomic research institute manager Wang Xueqing said the Chinese government should not issue 3G telecom licenses this year, reports The Beijing News. Wang said that 2006 is still too early to release licenses because the market is not mature, regardless of whether the standard is WCDMA, CDMA2000 or TD-SCDMA.

In other news, China Mobile announced that it recorded 4.07 million new users in January and reached 251 million users by the end of January. Only 119,000 of the new users are contract subscribers. China Unicom also announced that it registered 1.31 million new users in January and reached 129 million subscribers at the end of January.

Broken down, China Unicom had 96.06 million GSM users and 33.03 million CDMA users at the end of January, an increase of 990,000 and 316,000 new users from December, respectively. Prepaid users accounted for less than half of China Unicom's new GSM users while the majority of new CDMA users were contract subscribers.

Popular posts from this blog

The Smartphone Market's Premium Pivot

The global smartphone market closed 2025 with a story less about recovery and more about transformation. Premium product, ecosystem lock-in, and manufacturing scale are now the forces shaping competition. For business and technology leaders, the latest IDC market study data confirms that smartphones remain a critical indicator of consumer demand, supply chain health, and AI commercialization at the edge. Smartphone Market Development Global smartphone shipments grew 2.3 percent year-over-year in Q4 2025, reaching 336.3 million units and bringing full-year volumes to 1.26 billion units — a modest 1.9 percent annual increase, according to IDC. This smartphone growth emerged despite a memory shortage crisis, tariff volatility, supply chain disruption, and macroeconomic headwinds. What stabilized demand? Two factors: sustained growth in premium devices and strong foldable momentum, combined with accelerated purchases as consumers bought ahead of anticipated price increases. Buyers weren...