This trip was very rushed as I had a few - but important - business meetings to attend and then take the flight back again. No time for any tourist activities other than yesterday late afternoon's trip to the silk and pearl market looking for cheap clothes. Of course if dozens of Chinese "skilled" sales people try to "convince" you of their wares you end up buying too much. No difference for me. Prices are still very low of course although you can clearly see that things keep getting more expensive. I also had the feeling that shoppers are more quality aware and want not just good prices but also better products. E.g. a Mongolian cashmere shop was one of the biggest in this big market and business was obviously doing very well. Their quality and prices were outstanding which meants I was unable to resist buying a nice pullover. One of my customers got three...

While the China government is under lots of political pressure right now things are going as usual in the country and no signs of it anywhere. The Chinese are used to taking things as they are since they cannot influence them anyway.

In its attempt to catch up with with the West, wireless technologies have been defined as a political subject and the Chinese government has a big interest in establishing its own wireless standard - and with that becoming independent of Western suppliers. So is the theory. China Mobile is reported to have invested in 2007 2.85 billion USD in a TD-SCDMA trial network in 8 cities in China. Even with more than 500 million mobile phone users in China this is still a lot of money since of course ARPU is also still much lower than in other places. Rumors are though that TD-SCDMA will never see a large-scale deployment as it is technologically inferior to 3G and much delayed. To overcome a possible face-loss, rumor has it that China will decide to go for LTE-TDD, a new version of the next generation wireless technology LTE. We will see.

During my current trip this story has been confirmed by local insiders I could talk to. So we might actually never hear any official "TD-SCMA is dead" news, but a silent transition to whatever they decide next or in the interim. That keeps the story alive without anyone losing face either. The Chinese are flexible, as is well known.

The expansion projects total a volume of 550 million USD for GSM radio and core networks (also using Ericsson's mobile softswitch technology). This new infrastructure will be deployed in 17 Chinese provinces and serve 200 million users once completed. China Mobile is already a long time Ericsson customer - since 1987. Not surprisingly (timing is everything in PR) the same day China Mobile also became the world's largest mobile operator (by subscribers and now also by capitalization). Vodafone, who lost the number one rank, still has higher revenues but this lead should also disappear pretty soon. Vodafone's statement reads a bit amusingly in light of the reality: "It's not about size, it's about service to customers and the value we can pass onto shareholders."

Reality
"...the group's market valuation is now 40 per cent less than the £100bn it paid for Mannesmann, its German rival, back in 2000.

Vodafone posted a pre-tax loss of £15bn last year - a record for a British company - as it was forced to write down the value of the Mannesmann acquisition."

To rub it in: imagine they had invested those £100bn into China at the time instead of into the "booming" German mobile phone market.