Dell and China Mobile on Monday offered up more details about the Dell Mini 3i smartphone, which will be going on sale in China later this month.
The Android-based device, Dell's first smartphone, will support e-mail, instant messaging, and both MMS and SMS messaging. It will include Bluetooth and GPS capabilities and a Mini USB connector, and will accommodate Micro SD cards up to 32GB.
The quadband GSM/EDGE phone weighs 105 grams and includes a 3-megapixel camera with zoom, auto-focus, flash, video capture, and photo-editing capabilities. The touchscreen has a 640x360 resolution. Dell had already confirmed earlier this month that the Mini 3i would have a 3.5-inch high-definition screen.
Under the hood, the device is running China Mobile's OPhone software, a customized version of Google's Android operating system.
Like other Android phones, the Mini 3i will provide access to an online store, in this case, China Mobile's Mobile Market, where people can download apps, games, wallpaper, and ringtones. Users will be able to run different widgets on the home screen to keep on top of the news, weather, stock prices, and sports scores.
Dell said it has been collaborating with China Mobile for about a year on the development of the phone. The two companies teamed up earlier in the year to integrate a 3G data card for Dell's Inspiron Mini 10 netbook for the Chinese market. With more than 500 million customers, China Mobile is the world's largest mobile service provider, according to Dell.
Dell was initially mum on details when it first mentioned the Mini 3i about 10 days ago. But the company did reveal that China Mobile and Brazil's Claro would be the first global providers to carry its new smartphone.
Like China Mobile, Brazil's Claro boasts a huge subscriber base, with 42 million customers in Brazil alone. By selling the Mini 3i through both providers, Dell can potentially capture a much larger mobile audience than it could through any U.S. carriers.
Arriving in China Mobile stores by the end of November, the Mini 3i will shortly thereafter be sold directly from Dell. For those interested in color schemes, the Mini 3i will be available in Red Passion and Oiled Bronze--the image below shows the Red Passion treatment:
Dell Mini 3i smartphone
(Credit: Dell/China Mobile)Apple is wasting little time in expanding the reach of the iPhone in China.
Just two weeks after signing a deal with China Unicom, Apple is once again in talks with rival China Mobile to offer the iPhone as well.
China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou confirmed that his company is in talks with Apple to offer the iPhone, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. Unlike in some countries, like the United States, where carrier agreements tend to be exclusive, the deal with China Unicom is nonexclusive.
This leaves Apple open to negotiate with as many carriers as it wants in that market. This is both good and bad for Apple.
China Mobile, China's No.1 carrier, has 141 million subscribers, the Journal reported. That's more than triple the subscribers of No. 2 carrier China Unicom. Obviously, getting the iPhone into the hands of China Mobile customers would have great economic and market-share benefits for Apple.
However, as the Journal points out, Apple would need to make some changes to the iPhone in order for it to work on China Mobile's TD-SCDMA wireless platform. The other option is to leave the iPhone as is and let it run on the carrier's slower 2G platform.
The Symbian Foundation and China Mobile have joined forces to promote the development of Symbian-based software for the Chinese operator's app store.
The partners will also promote the uptake of TD-SCDMA, the 3G standard developed in China as an alternative to WCDMA and other wireless interface technology. The collaboration agreement was announced Wednesday.
"The Symbian platform holds a strong position in China's mobile market, and we welcome the opportunity to build our relationship with the Symbian Foundation," Lu Xiang Dong, a vice president at China Mobile, said in a statement.
China Mobile, which is China's largest carrier with about 497 million subscribers, launched its Mobile Market app store in July. The alliance with the Symbian Foundation, the industry organization behind the Symbian open-source mobile operating system, aims to increase the number of Symbian developers contributing to the app store and broaden the range of software in it.
The first part of the program will involve the foundation streamlining its Symbian Signed accreditation process for mobile applications, Symbian Foundation founding director David Wood said.
"Symbian Signed will be simplified to make it easier for developers, by clarifying exactly what the tests will involve," Wood said. "Some of the tests were a bit subjective, in that (the same) apps could be submitted and pass or fail, which was frustrating for developers. We're moving away from style questions to address core functionality."
The Symbian Signed process will be added to China Mobile's submission process for Mobile Market, meaning that developers will be able to have their software tested, signed and approved in one go.
The signing process will also be more closely linked to Symbian's Horizon program, which assists developers in building applications for the mobile OS and helps them submit the software to app stores.
In addition, the foundation plans to launch a Chinese-language Symbian site, reflecting its user base. In August, 60 percent of developers submitting applications to be accredited by Symbian were Chinese, according to Wood.
Western operators are increasingly collaborating with Chinese companies. Telefonica, the international telecoms company behind O2 in the U.K., announced Monday a $1 billion share swap with China's No. 2 carrier, China Unicom.
Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.
China Mobile introduced a new mobile platform Monday, and one of the presenting partners on hand has raised a few eyebrows.
Details of a Dell phone, reportedly called the Mini 3i, began to circulate on the Web almost immediately after being presented at the event, but Dell says it has not yet announced any smartphone for the China market.
A prototype of a Dell smartphone seen at a China Mobile event.
(Credit: Mobile.163.com)"Dell was there supporting China Mobile as a development partner. We did not confirm or announce anything," said Dell spokesman Matt Parretta.
There was, however, a "proof of concept mobile device prototype" shown off at the event, Parretta said. That explains the photos, which depict a black, candybar-style handset that had a touch screen and was stamped with the Dell logo on the back.
Reports from the China Mobile event, which introduced the wireless operator's Android-based Open Mobile System, or OMS, say the Mini 3i was confined to operate on a 2G GSM network--no Wi-Fi access--but had a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a slot for a microSD card.
Industry observers and market analysts have been largely underwhelmed both by the idea of a Dell smartphone, and according to some who saw early prototypes, the execution of it as well.
China Mobile's plans to open its own mobile app store probably have doomed any chance of Apple's iPhone getting onto that network.
(Credit: CNET)China Mobile is staking out its own ground in the mobile-application marketplace.
According to IDG News Service, the world's largest wireless carrier plans to introduce its own mobile-application store later this year, calling it "Mobile Market." The report says the store will be open to both independent developers and companies, though it's not clear what operating system or platform technologies will be used by the phones running on China Mobile's network when the store is ready to go.
China Mobile's plans for Mobile Market illustrate the difficulties that it and Apple faced in trying to reach an agreement to sell the iPhone through China Mobile. The two companies have flirted for quite some time, but Apple's insistence on being the sole gatekeeper and distributor for iPhone applications would have been at odds with China Mobile's desire to offer its own service, which is why Apple is believed to be negotiating with China Unicom instead.
Apple's approach is rare in the nascent mobile-application world: many other makers of mobile operating systems are trying to find a way to let carriers such as China Mobile in on the action while maintaining their own central roles. With about 415 million subscribers, China Mobile's customers will be an attractive target for handset companies and software developers.
Once there was just a single Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. Coming soon, in Australia, is the Kogan Agora. Now reports are pointing to an emerging gadget for China, known for the moment as the "OPhone."
The Lenovo-badged "OPhone"
(Credit: ModmyGphone)The site ModmyGphone is showing off a photo of a sleek gadget that it says is a joint effort of Lenovo, the PC heavyweight, and China Mobile, the largest cell phone operator in China:
The latest bit is, the phone is looking good and ready for testing. OPhone is a codename for phones that will be based on China Mobile's OMS (Open Mobile System) which is essentially Android + TD SCDMA (China's home-grown 3G standard).
Another site, ITProPortal, says that the smartphone, with "iPhone-esque minimalist features," is expected to debut in February or March.
The phone is likely to be a strictly domestic product, the reports say. China Mobile's spin on the OS would give it the ability to commission customized phones and would give it leverage in profit-sharing discussions. The mobile operator reportedly had a falling out with Apple over whether China Mobile could make modifications to the iPhone.
China Mobile is a member of Google's Open Handset Alliance, which just gained 14 members, including Vodaphone.
China Mobile, China's largest cell phone operator, plans to establish a research and development facility in Silicon Valley in 2009, according to a report from ChinaTechNews.com.
This is the first overseas research and development facility that China Mobile has set up, the news site reported.
Like mobile operators throughout the world, China Mobile is looking to add new data services to its offerings. The president of China Mobile's Institute of Research, Huang Xiaoqing, told the news site that it sees most of its revenue today coming from voice services, but the company recognizes that data services are the future. And it's looking to Silicon Valley for innovation.
China Mobile is already working with Google as part of its Open Handset Alliance. And many people believe that the carrier will soon launch an Android phone into the Chinese market. There's also been speculation recently that China Mobile will be the first Chinese operator to offer Apple's iPhone. But reports say a deal may fall through as China Mobile has asked Apple to strip down the phone and remove its 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities.
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