China Mobile launched G3 notebooks in April as part of efforts to promote 3G services

The world’s biggest mobile carrier China Mobile is planning to offer freebies and incentives to service providers to develop applications for its 3G mobile services.
China Mobile will enlist services and applications tailor-made for its TD-SCDMA 3G services from developers and partners and will not take commissions from them during the first year.
Lack of killer applications will hinder the growth of 3G services in the country, which introduced the services earlier this year.
The move is designed to give incentives to developers and services providers to develop applications for China Mobile’s 3G services, which is based on TD-SCDMA, a home-grown standard.
China Mobile will also provide marketing support services to those partners whose applications prove to be popular, according to Gao Nianshu, general manager of China Mobile’s data division.
The China electronics, Mobile Market, www.kakatech.com, will be open to developers to develop games and other applications or software infuture, which can be downloaded by existing China Mobile subscribers.
China Mobile’s move comes just as the telecom carrier is set to launch an online mobile phone application and software store, modeled after Apple’s and Nokia’s online stores.
Developing killer applications (such as text messaging in the 2G era) is critical to spur the 3G business and is the only way that it can really take off, Chen Jinqiao, deputy chief engineer from China Academy of Telecommunication Research, told China Daily earlier.
China Unicom reportedly inked a 10-billion-yuan deal with Apple to buy 5 million iPhones that support its WCDMA 3G services, in a bid to attract iPhone fans to be its 3G users.
The country’s three carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are pinning their hopes on the fledging 3G services to drive their business as the market is increasingly becoming saturated and competitive.