The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which has been more widely referred to as the “Tube” is all set to hit China, albeit without 3G or Wi-Fi. The lack of 3G may be due to the lack of coverage in China, but there’s hardly any reason to negate the W-Fi on the phone. 

No 3G and no Wi-Fi on a phone running Symbian S60 5th Edition with a full touchscreen front, makes it what, a hollow “Tube” ?

If it’s any consolation to you, the Meizu M8, one of the very first and more popular iPhone clone out there is scheduled to be launched in both the countries around December. The phone’s bears a striking resemblance to the Apple iPhone and has been dubbed as “the” iPhone clone by many.

Come December and GeekITStores are all set to launch the phone, first in China and then in India. According to their press release, the phone will be launched with complete ‘fanfare’ in the Chinese markets and will soon follow with a launch in India through the channel partners.

China Mobile is expected to officially launch the Apple iPhone on its network shortly – but with some of the functionality removed to comply with Chinese regulations. The South China Morning Post, citing a report from the Daiwa Institute of Research said that the 3G and Wi-Fi services would be disabled on the Chinese model.

Apparently Apple is not insisting on revenue-share any more. One assumes they want to sell as many iPhones as possible to the estimated 28 million Chinese who’re up for buying one.

Three different operators in the country, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom (Yeah, keep up with the names please) are planning to use three different 3G standards for their respective subscriber base. Although China Mobile has planned to implement the Chinese developed 3G standard TD-SCDMA, Chila Telecom has picked CDMA2000 while China Unicom has shown its love towards WCDMA standard. 

In an effort to maintain its numero uno position in the Chinese market, Nokia is planning to launch handsets supporting all of these standards. David Tang, VP of Greater China Sales, while speaking to the South China Morning Post, said:

Nokia supports the development of TD-SCDMA. We will have the handsets in the market when the service becomes active,

It is interesting to note that China Mobile, which has a market share of nearly 70%, has plans to use the TD-SCDMA 3G standard. However, Nokia currently does not have any TD-SCDMA handsets in the market.

A total of over 490,000 phone calls were made on the country’s GSM network, in and around the Beijing National Stadium, on the eve of the Opening and Closing ceremonies for Olympics. Before you start making remarks about the Chinese, the report goes on to mention that 20,000 of the total users were international roaming service users. Believable? 

Surprisingly, a spokesperson for China Mobile went on to reveal that they achieved 100 percent call connection rate and only around 0.27 percent of the calls were dropped.

The company also gifted 15,000 phones to Olympic officials.

Given that TD-SCDMA is the Chinese government’s baby and it’s been pushing it heavily for years – and also given the relative size of the Chinese market – I’m wondering what’s gone wrong with this particular flavour of 3G. After all, China Mobile even gave away 15,000 devices to draw attention to the TD-SCDMA launch.

Or is it just the case that the numbers will be so low because TD-SCDMA will have been superceded by LTE by then?

“Louis Vuitton offers a perfectly synchronised audio journey in which the voice of the narrator geographically guides the physical visitor in real time through an area of a city or a district.”

I say, it sounds a lot like the CoolGorilla guide for London called, inspiringly, the London Travel Guide.

If you’re going to Beijing then you can travel around with Louis Vuitton, if you’re in London you can be a CoolGorilla.

The Wall Street Journal says Sharp will trade off its TV brand, launching a range of phones under the Aquos banner. The first device will sell for 4,480 yuan (around £333) and come with a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The Chinese market is notoriously tough and recently some handset makers have admitted defeat and ceased selling their wares in the country. Targeting the bigger spenders might prove a wise move for Sharp though: there’s a big enthusiasm for higher-spec phones, as the 400,000 unlocked iPhones that turned up on China Mobile proved.

As a result of the changes, China Unicom and China Netcom will merge and China Mobile will buy Unicom’s CDMA network, according to Reuters, while China Mobile will takeover China Railway Communication.

It’s an absolutely fascinating series of changes, all apparently aimed at balancing China Mobile’s dominance in the country’s mobile market. Rather puzzlingly, the Chinese government hasn’t put any timeframe on when the changes will happen – or provided that much detail on how all it will all work out. Watch this space.

China Mobile is giving away 15,000 3G handsets to Olympics officials and 3 million yuan of call credit to boot, says Xinhua. They’ll be able to get the higer-speed TD-SCDMA connection in eight cities, five of which will be hosting the Olympics.

China Mobile first started testing the service back in April – it’s amazing that it will go from pilot to full launch within four months. Some people take that long to test an application, not an entire network. Or am I being too optimistic – is a short testing period likely to signify a network that hasn’t had all the gruelling testing it needs?

Forbes says the operator will give away 20,000 TD-SCDMA mobile numbers free and will give way the same number of handsets for nothing, with other subscribers offered discounts of 100 to 200 yuan on their phones.

Things are certainly moving in the right direction for TD-SCDMA – and the Olympics looks like it’s figuring large in people’s minds: five out of the eight cities are Games venues.

Xinhua said China Mobile will block SMS coming from the seven advertising companies and will work with all the operators to sort out rules on SMS advertising.

200 million messages – how did they manage it? The paper says that there isn’t much punishment for companies sending out junk SMS. That said, you would have thought the cost of sending out 200 million texts would be prohibitive enough.

The reports say that Sharp will bring in high-end devices to the Chinese market and the company is already in talks with operators about carrying the phones, making it the only Japanese handset maker selling its wares in neighbouring China (assuming you don’t count Sony Ericsson).

It’s no surprise handset makers are all turning their attention to China – it’s been enjoying record new subscribers of late and there’s still shedloads of room to grow before saturation starts to rear its ugly head. That said, Sharp’s compatriot Kyocera recently said it was pulling out of a China, so it’s certainly not an easy market, but it is one with enthusiasm for high end devices – exactly what Sharp plans to sell.

The two will also get closer by strengthening strategic ties, especially with regard to channel development, resource investment, and marketing management. The two companies have been working together since 1998.

It looks like Nokia won’t be losing its number one position in the handset making league any time soon: China Postel is the country’s largest mobile phone distributor with around 30 percent market share. It’s good news for Nokia that China Postel still has a healthy appetite for Nokia devices.