China Mobile will provide 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) in handsets subsidies for homegrown TD-SCDMA technology.

China Business News reports that the company may also offer higher subsidize phones that have been customized for China Mobile.

The company is also considering other possibilities, such as applying a subsidy to the cost of manufacturing the handsets, or offering cheaper voice usage fees in an attempt to boost sales, said China Mobile vice-president Lu Xiangdong said.  

“Because the volume and grade are not the same, we will segment all our TD handsets and apply different subsidy policies to different terminals,” Lu told an industry event in Beijing.

China Mobile already has signed 330,000 customers to its “trial” TD network and is expect to launch a nationwide service in the middle of the year.

He said the carrier would also launch a "TD Special Incentive Fund" to subsidize domestic chipset and terminal manufacturers in order to speed TD-SCDMA development.

China Mobile will also bundle a mobile TV service based on locally-developed CMMB technology directly into TD-SCDMA handsets.

Last year, China Mobile spent around $1.17 billion on handset subsidies.

Source:telecomasia.net