Industrial alliance boosts IT sector
By Xiao Huo (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-10-22 08:47

Nine leading Chinese telecom institutions formed a mobile multimedia technology alliance (MMTA) yesterday, making it one of the few government-backed industrial alliances that could bring breakthroughs in the development of China's booming IT sector.

Included in the MMTA alliance are not only telecom operators - China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom, but also equipment providers -Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, Putian Corp and Vimicro Corporation, and also a research institution - the China Academy of Telecommunication Research of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

The MMTA alliance will boost technical innovation and development of standards and applications in the booming mobile multimedia industry, said Zhang Xinsheng, deputy director of MII's science and technology department, host of the launching ceremony.

"The purpose of MMTA is to integrate the forces of various players in the value chain of the mobile multimedia industry to promote the innovation and standardization of networks, terminals and applications," said MMTA's president Jiang Lintao.

By lining-up the leading Chinese companies together, the move is also billed as a decisive measure taken to boost the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises in the race to apply upcoming 3G (third generation) technologies.

"The alliance will also provide a fair and reasonable intellectual property management platform," said Jiang.

According to data tracking company IDC, the number of mobile phones supporting multimedia applications will reach 380 million and the size of the mobile phone industry will reach US$76 billion by 2007 globally.

Mobile communication multimedia represented by 3G service will also see vigorous development. By 2008, the global market size of mobile game services, mobile photo services, mobile colour message services, mobile short message services and other existing services will reach US$17.5 billion, US$44 billion, US$60 billion, US$25.2 billion and US$8 billion respectively, which represents a great market potential for players in this field.

"But Chinese firms need to co-operate if they want to grab a larger market share facing the stiff competition from international rivals," said Zhang Hui, MMTA's vice-president and secretary general.

Apart from the research institutions, operators, terminal and network equipment manufacturers and core chip technology providers, Jiang said newcomers expected to soon join the alliance will include software developers and Internet content providers.

"There were numerous companies calling me in recent days, expressing their hopes to join the alliance," said Zhang Xinsheng.

But Jiang said that rules governing foreign institutions, although allowed to join the alliance, will be quite different from those of domestic members, and a detailed rule will be rolled out in coming months.

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