Handset makers Nokia, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson are talking with China Mobile about building devices to run on the carrier's "homegrown" third generation TD-CDMA networks. And if that isn't enough, the busy carrier said it was in talks with Apple to launch the iPhone in China as well.

China's billions of potential subscribers have vendors drooling over the prospects of the network rollout that will begin in the middle of 2009, even if it requires a little extra work to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

China Mobile chairman WAN Jianzhou sounds like he's one tough cookie when it comes to handsets, having reportedly said, "With TD-CDMA one headache now is that the available handsets are just not of good enough quality." Wang further said customers in network trials complained about dropped lines, which he blamed on the handsets, not the network.

Source:fiercewireless