China Telecom, one of the Big Three integrated telecom operators in the country, is poised to beef up expansion in the telecom terminal market in 2010, a year regarded as a decisive point in a three-year development strategy for its mobile telecom operation.

China Telecom will popularize terminals based on CDMA (code division multiple access) network in the country next year to consolidate its newly acquired business, disclosed Wang Xiaochu, general manager for the Beijing-based company, at an annual conference on December 23. China Telecom, once a fixed-line telecom operator, extended its reach to the mobile telecom segment after taking over the CDMA network from China Unicom, another big name in the Chinese telecom market.

The company will strengthen cooperation with terminal makers and retailers to enrich customized product lines and guarantee an in-time product delivery, said Mr. Wang, "We will ramp up sales via the distribution network of terminal retailers across the country, and will try to market products online."

Sales volume of CDMA mobile phones is expected to top 30 million units in the entire 2009, tripling the historic high, said Ma Daojie, general manager for Tianyi Telecom Terminal Co., Ltd., the terminal unit of China Telecom. More than 20 million CDMA mobile phones were sold in the January-September period. Such a shinning performance, according to Mr. Ma, is attributable to the company's efforts to enlarge its network coverage on the strength of a market prosperity.

China Telecom plans to set up an integrated platform for application development and content distribution to court for terminal makers, content suppliers, and core application developers around the world, according to Mr. Wang, noting that the move will enable the company to intensify its competitiveness while stimulating the mobile Internet-based information service industry as a whole.

By far, nearly 200 companies in the world have dipped toe in the CDMA terminal sector, spiking from 50-plus at the beginning. The telecom operator wins support from a slew of players out of the CDMA-powered mobile phone sector, apart from traditional mobile phone titans like Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK), Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), Samsung, and LG.

China Telecom will work out more concrete stimulus measures to motivate its partners in R&D and service provision, part of a win-win marketing strategy to lure "clients of clients". The CDMA network operator kicked off several bidding invitations for procurement of customized CDMA2000 mobile phones in 2009, a move that market observers say well illustrated the company's ambition to make a foray in the fast-growing 3G market.

Source:hexun