Domestic shipments of 3G handsets in China are expected to amount to 42.97 million units in 2010, up from 7.2 million in 2009, according to iSuppli. The research firm attributed the significant growth to aggressive subsidies from wireless carriers.

These subsidies, which make pricing of the 3G cell phones more attractive to consumers, are expected to drive up sales despite the lack of value-added data services for the TD-SCDMA air standard, iSuppli said.

“Chinese carriers plan to provide more than 50 billion yuan, or US$7.3 billion, worth of subsidies to promote the domestic 3G handset market in 2010,” said Kevin Wang, director of China research at iSuppli. “Because of particularly strong subsidies, phones using the TD-SCDMA air standard that is backed by the Chinese government will generate the bulk of growth in 2010.”

Domestic shipments of TD-SCDMA phones in China will rise to 20.4 million units in 2010, up from 1.3 million in 2009, according to Wang.

iSuppli believes that over the next five years, ongoing voice service fee reductions and declines in ASPs for handsets will assure the continued growth of China’s mobile subscribers – an immense base that topped 727 million at the end of 2009, following the addition of 108 million new users during the year. By the end of 2014, iSuppli forecasts that Chinese wireless subscribers will grow to 1.1 billion people, with 3G subscribers to reach 230 million.

Driven by carriers’ subsidies, newly added user and replacement demand, iSuppli estimated that domestic handset shipments will increase to 266 million units in 2010, up 11% from 2009. Besides 3G handsets, smartphones will be one of the hottest products in 2010.

To promote 3G data services, operators are building a new ecosystem leveraging mobile application stores and smart phones. To this end, China Mobile joined efforts with handset makers to develop an Android-based TD-SCDMA smartphone named Ophone – a move matched by international companies such as Samsung, LG and Motorola, which also introduced their own OPhones. Entering the fray is Nokia, which iSuppli expects will introduce its TD-SCDMA handset in the first half of 2010.

A popular feature for handsets in 2010 will be mobile TV, with China expected to adopt its home-grown mobile TV standard – known as CMMB. More than 230 cities had CMMB signals in China by the end of 2009. And to support TD-SDCMA, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is not allowing the CMMB mobile TV feature on other mobile-phone air standards.

In addition, a mobile TV service fee for three years of 300 yuan has been announced by CMMB operator China Broadcasting Corporation.

Aside from mobile TV, iSuppli believes that Wi-Fi, GPS and NFC will become popular new features for handsets in 2010.

The new Apple iPad will have a 3G connection, but U.S. consumers won’t necessarily get to shop carriers to pick the best deal on bandwidth.

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs made mention of the fact that the GSM-based device is “unlocked” at its launch in San Francisco Wednesday. In theory, this means that users should be able to switch to another GSM carrier if they prefer the service. In practice, however, users are actually stuck with a single carrier choice if they want the best wireless performance: AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T).

The problem is that the radio technology in the iPad — like the latest iPhone — doesn’t support the way that the other major GSM carrier in the U.S., T-Mobile USA , offers 3G. T-Mobile uses 2100MHz for downlink and 1700MHz for uplink. The 3G radio in the forthcoming iPad won’t support the T-Mobile uplink frequency, according to the technical specifications from Apple.

Consumers could potentially use the slower T-Mobile EDGE network and default to WiFi for heavy-duty downloads but the operator isn’t even confirming if it will support this yet. “This is actually a question for Apple, as it’s their product,” a T-Mobile spokeswoman told Unstrung.

It seems even less likely that Apple will deliver a CDMA-compatible version that will work on Verizon Wireless ’s network. “I don’t think they’re doing one,” a Verizon spokesman said on Wednesday.

Back to AT&T
So consumers can run the “unlocked” iPad on any 3G network they like as long as it’s AT&T.

3G-enabled versions of the tablet start at $729 and the prepaid monthly data plan is either $14.99 for 250MBs worth of downloads or $29.99 for unlimited downloads. [Ed note: Unstrung has asked AT&T if there is any maximum download cap on the unlimited plan. No reply yet.] The device isn’t subsidized, and AT&T has no revenue-sharing agreement in place on the data plans this time, unlike the original iPhone.

“I think the economics will be very positive,” AT&T CFO Rick Lindner said of the iPad on the operator’s fourth-quarter conference call Thursday morning.

There have already been questions about how well a major new broadband device will perform on AT&T’s 3G network. The company admitted last year that it has already been over-stretched by 3G traffic in NYC and San Francisco. (See Will the Apple iPad Crush 3G Networks?)

AT&T, however, believes that the usage model for an iPad will be a bit different, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone. This means more connections in the home or office, where the traffic can be off-loaded to WiFi, rather than on-the-move connectivity patterns like the iPhone.

AT&T has been steadily ramping up its WiFi hotspot network since it bought Wayport in December 2008. AT&T reported Wednesday that its customers made 85.5 million connections to the Internet in 2009 using AT&T’s WiFi network, four times the number of WiFi connections made in 2008. (See 85M AT&T WiFi Connections.)

Nonetheless, AT&T is still planning to spend big bucks on its 3G network in 2010, even if iPad users do turn out to be big WiFi fans. The company still added 3.1 million iPhone users in the fourth quarter and is launching a range of Android phones in 2010. The operator said that it will spend an additional $2 billion deploying and upgrading wireless in 2010, making its projected capex spend between $18 billion and $19 billion. (See AT&T to Spend $2B More on Wireless in 2010.)

SHENZHEN, Dec 15, 2009 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) — QCOM — Patterning sixteen Chinese partners such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE, Qualcomm staged a partner conference in China on December 4, during which Qualcomm president disclosed that the company derived 23% of its total sales from China last year, adding that with telecom operators there setting in motion the 3G market in full sail, China is likely to be the most important market of Qualcomm globally.
A recent iSuppli report indicates that China’s 3G users are expected to top 100 million by 2013 with China Unicom (SHSE: 600050) and China Telecom (SEHK: 0728, NYSE: CHA) to see significant gains in 3G subscribers.

The 3G technologies adopted by the two carriers, especially China Telecom’s CDMA2000, are both based on Qualcomm’s CDMA.

The avowed goal of the Chinese government is to spend as much as CNY 1 trillion on 3G in the coming three years, according to Zhao Bo, vice governor at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MII).

Chinese telecom carriers’ upcoming, vast investments in 3G have Qualcomm and its peers holding much hope for China. The number of local partners of Qualcomm in the third largest economy has almost doubled since the issue of the 3C licenses.

Qualcomm has leaped to the sixth place this year from the eighth in 2008 in the global semiconductor market. And it has topped the list of the major wireless semiconductor suppliers.

By research firm BDA’s estimations, WCDMA and CDMA EVDO users are likely to make up 40% of the total mobile phone subscribers in the world in five years ahead. And shipment of 3G handsets will outpace that of 2G next year. By 2013, the global 3G handset shipment will hit 1 billion.

The skyrocketing users and fast prevalence of 3G networks will continue weighing on terminal prices. An executive from Qualcomm notes that there will be 3G handsets priced below USD 30 for the emerging markets. On top of that, to further press down the price, Qualcomm is seeking to offer carriers its BREW operating system for free.

To meet the surging demand from users for multimedia, Qualcomm has done a lot of experiments. One of them is to bake several modems into one chip to cover networks of 2G, 3G, and even 4G. It has also been trying to add more functions such as video player and power management directly to 3G chips.

In 1990 Qualcomm began the design of the first CDMA-based cellular base station, based upon calculations derived from the CDMA-based OmniTRACS satellite system.

At the “Qualcomm China Partner Conference and Innovation Showcase” held this morning, Cristiano Amon, Senior Vice President of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, said, “With the development of the Chinese 3G industry, the global communications market has begun to take a favorable turn. Qualcomm predicts that the global 3G handset shipments will surpass 2G handset shipments in 2010 for the first time, which will become a turning point for the telecom industry.” Mr. Amon said, “Smartphones will account for more and more of the global handset shipments, and most of them will support 3G. The data released by different market survey firms show that the percentage of 3G handsets shipments will become higher and higher, relative to total handset shipments, and we believe that global 3G handset shipments will equal non-3G handset shipments in late 2009 or early 2010.”

Qualcomm has started providing wireless chipsets that combine 3G and 4G wireless technology.

The cunning plan is to help carriers transition to the next generation of wireless technology. While many carriers around the world plan to upgrade their networks to 4G using LTE, 4G signals will not be available everywhere and punters will need to roam on 3G networks.

Huawei Technologies, LG Electronics Novatel Wireless, Sierra Wireless, and ZTE have been named as testing the new chips, which will be in the shops in the second half of 2010.

Each chip allows wireless phones and other portable devices to switch between a 4G wireless network using LTE and HSPA Plus, a 3G wireless technology.

Meanwhile Qualcomm is providing a new set of mobile-device chips to manufacturers for testing that will add more multimedia features to new smartphones.

This chipset family supports high-definition video recording and playback, enhanced graphics, and an overall chip design that is optimised for the web.

Qualcomm expects phone makers to have devices that use the MSM7×30 family of chipsets commercially available by the end of 2010.

The chipsets will allow phones to operate on the most advanced 3G wireless networks, such as those running the latest generation of HSPA and EV-DO .

They have been adapted for use on Android, Brew, Symbian, and Windows Mobile operating systems. The company says that applications the chips could enable include a 12-megapixel camera, 720p video recording, and 3D gaming.

Meanwhile Qualcomm has been telling the world plus dog that its 1Ghz Snapdragon ARM chip will ship in an upcoming Lenovo smartbook.

AT&T will be flogging the ARM powered Lenovo smartbook and there is some talk that ARM is also into the small form-factor laptop market and could give Intel’s Atom some serious competition.

The ARM Cortex-A8 core has 1GHz of processing power and is already being seen in a few smartphones.