Wang Jianzuo, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and Chairman of China Mobile, said in an interview with our reporter yesterday at the economic group headquarters of the national "two sessions" that indigenous 4G (TD-LTE) will be fully commercially available in 2012, and the future cost of 4G will only be lower than that of 3G. This is his first response to the issue of the cost of indigenous 4G.
Previously, many industry experts believed that considering the early network construction costs and advertising promotion costs of indigenous 4G, the cost of 4G packages would likely follow a high-end route like 3G did initially, attracting high-end users.
Wang Jianzuo said that the biggest problem currently facing the development of indigenous 4G lies in hardware, mainly in terms of 4G terminal equipment. "The difficulties encountered by 4G terminal equipment are unprecedented for 2G and 3G devices. 3G terminals are smartphones, and when we talk about smartphones, we think of 3G. Now we still need a representative work that makes ordinary consumers know that this is 4G, which is a problem full of imagination, and I think it's the hardest. Among these, chips are the foundation. If we don't develop chips now, it will be impossible to have phones within several months."
It is understood that by the end of 2011, China Mobile's TD users had exceeded 50 million households. However, globally, only two operators have officially launched commercial TD-LTE services, and there are no real TD-LTE "phones" yet.
When talking about cooperation with Apple, Wang Jianzuo said that with the release of new chips by Qualcomm, the technical barriers to cooperation between China Mobile and Apple phones have gradually been overcome. He also revealed that China Mobile has been negotiating cooperation matters with Apple since the 2G technology era, and now it has entered the 4G era. The cooperation between the two parties is "progressing step by step in all aspects, and now it's just a matter of when and through what kind of way to launch the cooperation." So far, China Mobile's iPhone users have reached 15 million households, basically increasing by 1 million households every month since last year.