On 4th December of last year, China issued 3 TD-LTE licenses, which marked the coming of the 4G era. As a strong push to the development of TD-LTE industry, China Mobile began intensive preparations soon after acquiring the license, two weeks later, namely on 18th December it first announced the launch of commercial 4G services. Counting from the licensing day, China Mobile 4G commercial business has been a full anniversary.
In last year, China Mobile has invested large amounts of money under huge pressure and controversy, it built the world's largest 4G network and initially formed a complete and mature TD-LTE 4G industrial ecology.
Network
In early 2013, China Mobile released the "dual-hundred plan": cover 100 cities with 4G network and purchase 1 million 4G devices. By early 2014, China Mobile greatly enhanced its target and announced to complete construction of 500,000 4G base stations, covering over 300 cities.
This goal was first regarded as a "great leap forward" by the industry, after all, TD-SCDMA 3G base stations were only 490,000 after 5 years construction. But China Mobile's ambition is more than this. By the end of October in this year, China Mobile has built 570,000 4G base stations, which covers over 300 cities and basically realized coverage of cities and developed towns above the county level, the population coverage rate reaches 75%, and 4G subscribers could achieve 4G roaming in 27 countries and regions including America, Hongkong and the others.
According to China Mobile, this number will be reset to 700,000 by the end of this year, 40% higher than the "great leap forward" plan. It is expected that the total number of 4G base stations of China Mobile will exceed 1 million by 2015. For the subscribers, 4G subscribers of China Mobile have exceeded 50 million by October, achieving the annual goal 2 months ahead of schedule. Judged by the current monthly growing speed of more than 10 million subscribers, it will exceed 70 million by the end of the year. China Mobile predicts that the 4G subscribers will exceed 150 million in the next year and 300 million in the third.
However, the commercialization of China Mobile VoLTE was over postponed. It was predicted in last year that China Mobile will launch VoLTE commercial services in the second half of this year, but judging from the current situation, it won’t come true until the first half of next year. What needs to be pointed out is that, in the global perspective, limited by the cost and applications, VoLTE commercial process was far behind the expectation.
Devices
In the beginning of 4G commercialization, the available 4G devices are very limited, vendors have launched only around 20 models, and of course they don’t have advantage in prices. Due to lack of supports from star models such like iPhone in 3G era, China Mobile once suffered in the markets, and it’s definitely unwilling to repeat the awkward situation of the past in 4G era.
China Mobile and Apple reached cooperation in January of this year, and launched iPhone 5S that supports China Mobile 3G TD-SCDMA and 4G TD-LTE standards. The released iPhone 6/ iPhone 6 plus in the second half of this year also support China Mobile 4G. In addition, with the rapid arise of the Chinese smartphone vendors in the past two years, their devices also support China Mobile 4G, which bring more variety of choices for 4G devices.
Up to now, China Mobile has guided 129 vendors to participate in the TD-LTE 4G industry chains, and devices supporting TD-LTE rapidly increase to 617 models, among which smartphones of 1000-yuan level increased from 0 to 360, occupying more than 60% of the total models. The lowest price of 4G mobile phone was lowered to 399 yuan, China Mobile owned brands like M811, M812 are also launched in this year, and product forms are also enriched, including data card, MIFI, CPE, dual-SIM mobile phone, wearable devices and so on.
Data from the MIIT show that 4G TD-LTE mobile phone shipments has reached 87.14 million by the end of September, with 55.43 million sold already. According to the forecast, sales of China Mobile 4G mobile phones will exceed 100 million by the end of this year, and the mobile phone models will reach 700. In the prices, it will be as low as 800 yuan for five-mode 4G mobile phones and 500 yuan for three-mode 4G ones.
Internationalization
In June 2013, the world's largest TD-LTE operator Softbank Mobile revealed that its TD-LTE subscribers were only 1.4 million, and it was difficult to form benchmark power, which resulted in the cautious wait-and-see attitudes to TD-LTE of operators in other countries. The two years strong push of China Mobile is regarded as to "stabilize the morale", and the big investment strongly boost confidence in the industry.
Data shows that GTI has got 114 operators and 95 cooperative vendors by the end of October 2014, 42 TD-LTE commercial networks are opened in 26 countries, and another 76 commercial networks are being planned, covering more than 10 countries/regions in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania. The 4G standards leaded by China is ushering the coming of global scale commercialization era.