CDMA World Forum: Devices bring 100,000 jobs to Chinese province

GUANGHZOU, China – More than 100 CDMA handset manufacturers have a presence in Guanghzou, China, contributing more than 100,000 jobs to the province, said CDMA Development Group COO James Person.
The CDG held its CDMA World Forum in conjunction with China Telecom’s Device Trade Fair late last week. China Telecom is the world’s largest CDMA operator, boasting more than 100 million customers in three years. Because of that, China Telecom held its own trade show, where handset and chip manufacturers from around the world exhibited. While many of the device manufacturers are popular names, including Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp., both of which are headquartered in China, other Asian manufacturers like HTC Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. also have a large presence at China Telecom and exhibited at the device fair. Some manufacturers, such as CoolPad, are less well known, but many other manufacturers are popular in China but relatively unknown outside the country, Person said.
Operators attending the CDMA World Forum listened to presentations on CDMA’s roadmap, including CDMA 1x Advanced and CDMA EV-DO Revision B, which adds speed and helps with throughput, Person said. Some operators, like KDDI Corp., are deploying what it calls a subset of Rev. B, CDMA EV-DO multicarrier, which only requires a software upgrade, forgoing the more expensive hardware deployment.
CDMA is particularly well suited to machine-to-machine communications, Person said, due to its location and security capabilities.