Nokia says more TD-SCDMA handsets are on the way, but probably not until 2011, according to China Daily.
The Niklas Savander, Nokia's executive vice-president, told the state-controlled newspaper the company was working closely with China Mobile on new TD phones to boost its flagging market share in China.
Nokia has released just four TD-SCDMA phones to date, the latest being the C5 and the C5, launched in April. Samsung, the market leader with 48% share of phones sold, is selling nine models.
Savander wouldn’t say when the next handsets would hit the market, but China Daily quoted a source saying Nokia was planning to issue “several” new TD phones next year.
Take-up of the locally-developed technology is extremely slow. China Mobile reported just 11.8 million users to the end of July – the equivalent of less than two months’ 2G subscriber growth.
Wang Yuquan, senior consultant with Frost & Sullivan China, said he doubted Nokia would take any substantial move in the market. “The whole TD-SCDMA industrial chain has problems,” he told China Daily.
Nokia, which has set up a 100-member research team to develop TD-SCDMA devices, sells fewer 2G and 3G devices in Greater China than it does in Europe, although it improved sales by 21% year-on-year in the latest quarter.
MORE ARTICLES ON: China, China Mobile, Nokia, Samsung, TD-SCDMA
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