CHINA will issue 40,000 dual-mode television mobile phones to Beijing Olympics staff and the models are expected to be available to the public soon after, which will push the development of the Chinese mobile TV market, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.

Firms including Shanghai Simcom and ZTE Corp have produced the phones, which can receive both signals from TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) mobile networks and the TV broadcasting channel CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting).

Shanghai Simcom, a subsidiary of HK-listed SIM Technology Group Ltd, will produce 20,000 phones for the Olympics.

Engineers are working overtime to produce the phones before the deadline, a Simcom's executive said yesterday.

ZTE has developed dual-model phone U728 and the Shenzhen-based firm said it had received orders for 8,200 models.

Samsung and Coolpad were also in the running to produce the dual-model phones but the companies were not available for comment yesterday.

China has ordered 100,000 TD-SCDMA phones for the event, ZTE said.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Mobile have sent 3G phones, which supports Olympic TV services, to Beijing Olympics volunteers and sports delegates, the ministry's Website said yesterday.

TD-SCDMA is 3G technology which allows handset users to watch TV services through high-speed mobile networks. Based on the CMMB, people can receive seven Olympic channels on their handsets, including CCTV1.

"There are two rival technologies on mobile TV and the regulator hasn't decided to choose which one yet," said an industry source who declined to be identified.

"But after the Olympics, the dual-model phones are expected to become popular in China."

The two standards will coexist and the dispute on which is the authorized standard will disappear, industry insiders said.

Mobile TV is a business with big potential but it faces regulatory obstacles in many countries, according to iSuppli, a US-based research firm.

Source:shanghaidaily