TD-SCDMA is stilling lagging behind in handset development, but greater participation from leading international handset makers would help resolve the issue, says the technology's chief industry body.
Currently 20 handset makers are committed to providing over 40 models of handsets for TD-SCDMA, says TD-SCDMA Forum secretary-general Wang Jin. But that pales compared to the ecosystems for W-CDMA and CDMA2000, both of which have the support of a hundred handset makers worldwide, he says.
Moreover, Wang adds, only two TD-SCDMA handset makers - Samsung and LG - are foreign vendors. That matters because TD-SCDMA needs international support to compare with W-CDMA in terms of both quantity and quality, he says.
'A major issue for TD-SCDMA is to ensure the stability, functionality and the price of the handsets, and involvement from international handset makers is key to resolving the issues,' Wang told a conference at PT ExpoComm in Beijing.
To gain wider support from foreign vendors, he urged the government and the operators to layout a clear strategy for TD-SCDMA and to provide market information - such as estimated handset demand for the next few years - so that vendors can make a business plan.
This is a chicken and egg situation. Foreign vendors are now hesitant [to develop TD-SCDMA handsets] because there is no such information available to them,' he said.
The other issue is that TD-SCDMA's only deployment to date is via China Mobile, which operates the China-developed technology in ten cities, including Beijing. Wang says the networks altogether have about 16,000 base stations providing services to over 200,000 users.