So silent the last echoes of the Beijing Olympics. Within two weeks, one of the major newsmakers in the world is a magnificent “Bird’s Nest”. During this time, interest in China and all the Chinese, particularly the highest, soared almost to the heavens.

We also found it interesting topic in China, although in certain aspects. Namely – Chinese cell phone makers and their influence on the global mobile market. Moreover, the influence of companies from the Middle Kingdom has long been very noticeable. Today, it affects not only the scope of the contract manufacturing mobile phones for OEM-ODM-and agreements with leading global companies, but also develop their own original models. Chinese vendors, entrenched in the domestic market for several years actively seeking out international mobile arena. Moreover, to this end, local companies are not averse to buy mobile units is much more well-known corporations. Including these transactions allow a person-promoted brand (before the eyes of examples TCL and Alcatel, CEC and Philips).

Russia is one of the priority markets for Chinese manufacturers of mobile phones. More interesting to get acquainted with them closer, to find out whether they have any competitive advantage over the leading industry players such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and others. Interestingly, despite the obvious difference in the classroom and scale of production, companies from the Middle Kingdom and their products have already succeeded in some ways to correct the direction of the mobile industry. Perhaps in the future we expect other surprises … However, it is worth, perhaps, go directly to the heroes of today’s thematic review.

History of the Chinese mobile market

Certainly, the development of the Chinese mobile market has had a tremendous influence the status of China as the world’s assembly shop of various high-tech products. Transfer telecommunications companies of their plants in China, including those led to a sufficiently early development of mobile communications in the country.

Already in 1992, Motorola has built in China, Asia’s largest production capacity for the production of mobile phones. In the future, its example was followed by other corporations such as Siemens, Ericsson (later – Sony Ericsson), Nokia and others. However, the dominance of foreign manufacturers has led to insufficient active development of the Han Chinese companies. As a result, the first real Chinese GSM mobile phone was manufactured in China only in 1996. This is significant for the Chinese domestic market event occurred through the efforts of staff of the Institute for Information Industry.

However, more Chinese manufacturers are hopelessly lost the world’s leading companies. Thus, all the domestic cellular market by 1997, there were only five actual Chinese companies.

Realizing the prospects of deploying cellular networks in the country with such a huge population, foreign companies did not stint on investment in the production of mobile phones. Actively building factories for the production of mobile phones, including in special economic zones like Shenzhen. Thus, for the period from 1999 to 2002, foreign companies have invested over 10 billion dollars in the development of mobile phone production in China. Of course, the lion’s share of production of these plants was sent for export, however, and the internal Chinese market is not suffering from a shortage of supply from world producers.

Another impetus to the development of mobile industry served as China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. In order to resist further enhance the foreign companies in connection with this, 17 Chinese manufacturers of mobile phones even united – in the same year – in the alliance China Mobile Communications Association. The purpose of this neoplasm was the unification of efforts in research and development, as well as issues related to logistics and distribution of finished products.

This consolidation has led to certain results. In 2001, the share of Chinese phone manufacturers in the domestic market amounted to no more than 10%. But by 2003 it had risen to 40%.

No less interesting is the question of the standards of cellular communication in China. Naturally, GSM has been and remains the dominant standard. At the same time for several years now is a lot of conversations about the deployment in the country networks of third generation 3G. However, in spite of today’s existing technology WCDMA (UMTS) and CDMA2000 U.S. company Qualcomm, the PRC government has made a bet on developed by Chinese company Datang Telecom Technology original standard TD-SCDMA (Time Division – Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).

Using this standard in the domestic Chinese market of mobile communication would avoid the royalty for the use of proprietary standards, CDMA and UMTS. However, even the developer of the standard TD-SCDMA, the company Datang Telecom Technology, acknowledges that the technology is inferior to existing solutions. Nevertheless, in the early decades of the development of the standard TD-SCDMA went very active. Datang Telecom Technology managed to create a pool of many telecommunications companies such as Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, Nortel, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, local developers Huawei Technologies, Legend, Soutec, China Electronics, China Putain and ZTE. The German company Siemens has become a strategic partner of Datang Telecom Technology, investing in the development of TD-SCDMA standard, the order of 200 million euros.

However, the introduction of cellular networks of the third generation was much more lengthy process than expected. At the time, representatives of the International Olympic Committee had promised that the cellular network of the third generation will earn in the country before the Olympic Games in Beijing. That did not happen, and testing of national commercial mobile network standard, TD-SCDMA, to identify and eliminate potential technical problems that had just begun. Serious delays were caused mainly by the immaturity of the standard TD-SCDMA, a lot of time spent on the refinement of technology.

However, and market GSM-making is very interesting. The leader of the Chinese cellular market is the operator of China Mobile Communications Corporation, controlled by the Chinese government (Ministry of Information Technology of China). The company was formed in 2000 through the provision of the state telecommunications company, China Telecom and the first years became a record number of subscribers. Today it is the largest cellular operator in the world. Suffice it to say that the number of subscribers of China Mobile than the U.S. population (more than 376 million people), and a market capitalization of more than 300 billion dollars. In addition to the domestic market, the operator is actively developing and other Asian markets for mobile communications.

Another leading operator of China is also a state-owned China Unicom. This statement is remarkable in that a few years ago began to develop a line of IP-telephony.

The total number of subscribers in China now exceeds 600 million people (almost twice the number of users of fixed telephone) – an impressive figure. Nevertheless, given that China’s population exceeds 1 billion people, mobile telephony market in the country is still far from saturation. Together with India, China is the fastest growing mobile market. Although, in fairness, it should be noted that India still lags far behind China in this regard – to date, the customer base in this country does not exceed 300 million people.

Obviously, to provide all these hundreds of millions of subscribers in China, mobile phones just to foreign producers such as Nokia, Samsung and others, not under force. Chinese companies also play an important role in ensuring public offerings for mobile communications.

Domestic mobile phone market in China today – players and solutions

Today the share of foreign companies in the domestic mobile market remains high. Market leaders are – as everywhere – Finnish Nokia, U.S. Motorola and Sony Ericsson. However, Chinese companies have strong positions. Along with leading players, such as Shenzhen Zhonxing Telecom (ZTE), Huawei Technologies, Amoi, Bird, there are dozens of smaller manufacturers.

Moreover, the Chinese mobile phone market, despite the continued high rate of development, today there is a clear overabundance of producers. Thus, already in the past year the number of companies licensed to manufacture mobile phones has exceeded 80. But small companies are no longer able to maintain a high rate of production of mobile phones in response to falling profitability. As a result, they are forced to merge with larger players or even withdraw from the market, minimize or sell produce. However, this happens not only with small companies.

Thus, in April this year the company Lenovo, known worldwide as a manufacturer of notebook ThinkPad (legacy IBM), but at the same time producing and mobile phones, announced the sale of its mobile unit for $ 100 million.

In this connection it must be recognized that the Chinese mobile phone market is gradually entering a phase of consolidation and stagnation, decline in profitability due to release phones. While it is this fact does not affect the volume of handset sales. Last year, the number of vehicles sold on the domestic Chinese market totaled 101 million devices. This year, plans to sell 122 million mobile phones and 142 million – next year.

Clones

In an effort to reduce costs, many Chinese manufacturers, especially far from the leading positions, go to the various steps. Some of them did compromise the Chinese companies as producers of independent mobile solutions. As we know from other fields (hours, MP3-players, other digital equipment), small Chinese firmochki not averse to copy the design well-known manufacturers. Further minimize the costs lead to the use of extremely cheap materials shell. It also leads to the majority of companies use one or two platforms (in particular, Spreadtrum Chinese and Taiwanese MediaTek). But disappointingly low level of quality control in production, localization of products (if they are supplied to foreign markets) completes the picture.

jpg

As a result of all this leads to an enormous number of low-quality mobile phones, clones, which discredit the Chinese manufacturers as the original developers of mobile phones. Meanwhile, the domestic Chinese market is enough and such companies that offer really interesting and high-quality solutions, although at a higher price, comparable to the cost of products known manufacturers of mobile phones.

If we talk about counterfeit products known companies, then you can sort out some key points. Most cloned innovations in the mobile industry, the flagship product lines of manufacturing companies, and just expensive phones (including Class Luxury, such as Vertu, for example). Intensified subjected to cloning and fashionable at the moment the model. Thus, at various times been popular counterfeit Motorola RAZR V3, Sony Ericsson K750i.

At the same time from the cloned phone in the forgery remains except a hint of design, photographic resemblance to the original is not necessary. The software is filling completely different. In particular, none of the fake Nokia you will not find a real working Symbian OS. In some cases, the design of the main menu, icons repeat the original, but nothing more.

Naturally, neither of which the outstanding quality of materials shell not speak. Chinese manufacturers can improve the quality of manufacture, use ????????? plastic, but all this would increase the cost of production. The same applies to technical characteristics. In a cheap knockoff top models, by definition, can not install the same camera module or the same quality screens. In the most “severe” cases and simplifies the design at all – for example, fake “sliders» Nokia N95 and the Nokia 8800 is miraculously transformed into monoblocks. Like producers of clones and create hybrids, borrowing design and specifications of two or more devices.

“Generic traits” characteristic of the Chinese manufacturers today are also able to influence the nature of manufactured solutions. As a result, phones acquire such parameters, which are never met in the original models – touch screens, the ability to work with two SIM-cards, a few speakers and so on. By the way, not always for the users phone-clone is a drawback.

Special mention deserve the name of cloned vehicles. Their producers prefer to produce vehicles under the names resonate official: Veptu, Anycoll, Amycoll (from Anycall – Samsung brand for the Asian market), Nokla, N [] kia, Nckia, Nokir, Sang Ericsson, Suny Ericssun and the like. The index of models may vary in very wide range, from the real signs copied devices (N95, for example) to the most fantastic (Sony Ericsson F1). Much credit for this belongs to the Internet. Thanks to insiders from the camp of companies that produce information about the future premieres in the network is laid out well before the official announcement. This allows creators to stay ahead of counterfeiting, and by the time the novelty of its clones may be a long time to sell. Exactly one year before the official announcement emerged clone of Nokia N79. Of course, with a completely different design and performance, inspired by the then smartphones N-series.

In this review today, I’ll tell you about the five mobile phones, the main feature of which is a small price. So, start with the very-very cheap and on the rise.

Motorola C118 combines excellent design and ergonomics at an attractive price. The cost of the apparatus is 1000 rubles, for this amount you get a small piece (size Motorola C118 are 101h48h23 mm, and weight – 80 g) with good appearance. Motorola C118 – a more elaborated clone mobile phone Motorola C115, only with more high-quality durable plastic and with larger buttons. The front panel is the display with a resolution of 96×64 pixels monochrome display with blue backlight.

Functional device is small and fully consistent with the cost. From the useful and necessary here is a football game, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, calculator and currency converter.

Manufacturers equipped S118 Li-Ion battery 920 mAh, which allows you to explore the phone on a single charge 8 hours of talk time and 120 hours of standby time.

Philips 192 will cost 100 rubles more expensive than the previous phone for the money you get a very pleasant to use, small and thin telefonchik with a set of necessary functions. The size of this little device is 43×104x11 mm, weight 60 g. Could not looking at the light and slim body, in the hand Philips 192 is very convenient!

Singularities of the Philips 192 no, there are only pluses: comfortable rubber keypad, color display (the display resolution is 128×128 pixels, the number of displayed colors – over 65 thousand), fast charging time. Incidentally, the battery, which supports the efficiency of mobile phones, has a capacity of 650 mAh, the battery life in talk mode for 3 hours, Standby time – 240.

Nokia 1200 – the niche “Nokia” with a price tag just under 1200 rubles (some would say that the model name of speaking). Nokia 1200 is made in a classic candy bar body with no external antenna from a very rigid and elastic plastic. To break this up would be enough is not easy. Despite its low cost machine made qualitatively.

Nokia 1200 is equipped with a monochrome display with green backlight. Permission is 96×68 pixels. Information on the display reads very well, people with impaired vision will not feel discomfort. Functional device is good, for little price you get a phone equipped with an alarm clock (both single and daily basis), memo, 3 games, calculator, converter, timer, calendar, stopwatch, Composer and a flashlight.

Nokia 1200 Size 44×102x18 mm and weight 77 ?.

LG KG270 – another representative of the super-budget mobile phones worth 1180 rubles. The device has a classic case, no external antenna. The front panel is a color display, made by STN technology – in the sun read problem. Display resolution 128×128 pixels, the number of displayed colors – 65 thousand.

Functionally, the apparatus is the same as the phones, I have described earlier, but there is one good raisin – FM radio. Size LG KG270 are 45×98x13 mm, Weight 73 ?. Li-Ion 750 mAh battery allows you to work out a mobile phone 3 hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby time.

Fly V70 – the most “advanced” mobile phone of this review. For the price slightly less than 1300 rubles you get a small one-piece phone with rounded corners with the most necessary functions, as well as with a camera. The front panel is a color STN display with a resolution of 46×101 pixels which displays 65536 colors.

The functional phone certainly is not great, but, in fact, there is all right, but for this price so all is well: calendar, alarm clock, calculator and stopwatch. In addition to the Fly V70 is built-in camera with a resolution of 640×480 pixels. To store the captured images 6.7 MB user available. Dimensions Fly V70 46×101x13 mm, weight – 70 g. Battery Li-Ion 750 mAh capacity allows you to work out 3 hours 20 minutes in conversation and 200 hours of standby time.

This concludes our review of the five most ultrabyudzhetnyh mobile phone worth up to 1300 rubles. If you are looking for is most devevy mobile phone, apart from those on the market no longer exists.

3G-network in Samara was launched in late August and 3 September is officially in the commercial exploitation. “Feel” the system of the third generation with his own hands was a very interesting and informative, because to Moscow this whole 3G-Grace gets more distant.

Correctly says that “it is better to see once …” and himself as follows errands in one place, than to study press releases and local telecom forums. Any test zone and pieces 3G-networks at the exhibition allows us to get some idea of the system, but during the demonstrations in the test areas and everything works great, who would doubt. But in the real-life conditions on the current and begin to identify a busy network of interesting features.

Who needs all those 3G?

Correct, “ideologically” response – need millions of consumers who dreams of a video call, fantastically fast internet, unusual voice quality and a set of new additional services. What is it? When I try to answer this question is usually a deep thinking, and not in vain. In principle, the new 3G-services are almost there, although many services such as mobile TV is finally earn a normal quality. Almost the only exception – video call, which is possible only in the third generation networks. But everything with him was not so simple. Video call waiting with impatience and marketers diverted him to the role of the very wonder-Service (killer application), which formed a queue in shops and offices of operators for new pipes to support 3G. However, in Europe the real statistics of all in its place: does not want to use the video call was wildly popular. Even in the face of its advertising promotion price of a standard call. Few wanted to show his own face during a call that humanly understandable. And if the morning on Monday a call from the boss? No, these video calls to us absolutely nowhere. Although the service itself can be very even to please a unique “postcard” and cover the interesting events, the effect of presence is worth a lot. Indeed, nobody makes it include the front camera and show your own face, the surrounding reality is much more interesting. Although it is not to avoid surprises, like a call from his beloved wife: “Come on show us what have you got for the term project, because of which you at nine in the evening for another job?”. By and large, the mythical miracle service to look to anything and do this long since ceased, concentrating on highlighting the delights of fast mobile Internet. And rightly so, in the 21 st century the Internet is quite capable of take care of himself and then give everyone just what he needs.

Third-generation network operators need no less than we do with you. Rather, even more. Conventional second-generation GSM networks operate a certain range of frequencies and this range in the big cities is no longer enough catastrophically. A “stretch” is not possible, the tube still does not understand, because 20 years ago with the development of a standard no one anticipated such a number of simultaneously speaking subscribers. Pere-use of frequencies, reduced power BS with a simultaneous increase in their number and other technical gadgetry come to the rescue, but in metropolitan areas have not always save. As the mobile Internet, then in a heavily loaded 2G-network with no problem. In the sense that it is not, of the mobile Internet. Icon GPRS / EDGE on display there and kind of connection happens there, and the data are not transmitted at all or just drop by drop, all channels are distributed under the voice. And with such a situation we are facing with increasing frequency. This affects users who loses their income statements. The only radical solution – the 3G network with new ranges of frequencies and new opportunities to build the number of subscribers and provide them with data services without interruption and lengthy “fading”.

Price issue

New speed mobile Internet services are simply obliged to generate new revenues. Favorite journalists’ questions at press conferences: “Will you raise the price of services to 3G? At which representatives of operators happy and proud to answer: “No, the prices remain the same.” Even though they do not remain the same! The trick is that now the data rate for GPRS-connection is a natural constraint on 3G this restriction removed. Yes, all sorts of technical and tariff tricks you can try to deceive the consumer, this in one way or another sin all operators. Writing natsedit cup internet under a thin stream of GPRS-connection, and the money to tear off as a couple of mugs. In the third-generation networks, data pouring stream and consume them, we’ll buckets, “the Internet is not a lot. Today, people cut off in the smartphone browsers display images and use Opera Mini to speed up loading of conventional Web-pages, tomorrow will be watching videos on YouTube. Megabytes of data transferred – no service, and charging the unit, maintaining the old price per unit of traffic for us with you will mean a significant increase of prices of mobile internet. For service naturally comes to a qualitatively new level, and in terms of consumed units of “heavier” repeatedly. Total couple of years ago at the cost of sending SMS-messages accounted for 70% of the total value-added services (VAS), now the situation is different. According to representatives of Beeline in Samara, revenue from mobile internet has reached 50% of total value added services and the extent of market saturation 3G-devices, this percentage will increase, and the numbers grow VAS revenues. As a start “zavlekalochki” Beeline offers connecting all subscribers to 20 megabytes of free traffic (as usual, first wrote the GPRS-traffic), further “optimize” the costs of proposed purchase of Internet packets or connection to the tariff the Internet at home “and purchase a 3G-modem .

Another aspect – Russia’s specificity. Paradox: the operator primarily interested in the development of 3G services in metropolitan areas, and for Russians to speed third-generation contrast is more important in the outback. It’s no secret that quite often broadband internet by wire is not available even in suburban towns, not to mention the remote towns and villages. The only “window to the world” – mobile, or satellite internet access, in this case the speed and comfort of 3G will fall more than welcome. The inherent specificity of Russia’s concerns and an almost complete lack of real competition in broadband access in small cities and towns, new entrants to the market just do not let “interested” representatives of local administration. And a select few Internet providers for this population are encouraged absurdly high prices. Fortunately, the impact on radio wave propagation administrative levers difficult, so the prospects of mobile broadband access in small towns can be surprisingly good.
Appliances

3G network in Samara is built on the equipment corporation Huawei, now in the Samara network segment (soon expected to launch in Togliatti) operates about 100 base stations of 3G. Stated coverage area with a population of 80% of the population of Samara. According to the representatives of Huawei, stei involved in cutting-edge engineering solutions, including distributed base stations, DBS (Distributed Base Station) with remote transceivers. In the process of testing the network were achieved speeds of 6,5 Mbps for receiving and 1,9 Mbit / s data transmission. Feasible, affordable user rate of data acquisition to date should be 3.6 Mbps.

According to the Beeline, in Samara network currently around 12 thousand subscribers already walking around with 3G-terminals. And it is only those phones and smartphones, which includes automatic network selection 3G. Presumably, with the advent of the appropriate number of commercial 3G-terminals in the network will grow.

A serious obstacle to the penetration of 3G «to the masses” – a relatively high price of handsets. But not far off appearance on the market a sufficient range of budget models, because 3G support has ceased to be a sign of “elitism” apparatus. In the picture – very nice inexpensive piece Huawei, which today might sell us at a price below $ 100.
How it works

Works fine, but not without criticism. With voice communications in 3G is OK, the subjective voice quality is very good, sound is softer and more natural than in GSM. Although up to a good analog connections “by wire” does not seem to fall short. But the voice – he has a voice, 3G, we with you are not interested in that. Video call in the network works, and as “zavlekalochki” This additional service is not charged, ie service is still available for the price of a standard voice call. Regarding the transfer of data, everything is much more interesting.

Plenty urging 3G-modem in a local SIM-card, including using the very same gift 20 MB of traffic. We were pleased with the stability pere6dachi data, but claimed 3,6 Mbit / s “pull” from the network I did not succeed.