China Mobile Planning to Open Silicon Valley R&D Office

China Mobile is planning to open a research centre in the USA - within California's Silicon Valley - sometime next year. This will be China MobileÃ's first overseas research and development effort.

Huang Xiaoqing, president of China Mobile's Institute of Research told the China Market Intelligence publication, "that for a long time, the major revenue of China Mobile has been contributed by its voice services, but now it needs some innovations and Silicon Valley has the best environment."

According to Huang, it is also the first trial for China's telecom industry on an overseas R&D facility since the recent industry restructuring.

China Mobile is widely understood to be working with handset OEMs on developing a range of smartphones based on the Google backed Android operating system. The company has also been rumoured to be working on its own OS platform for 3G phones which would be sold for use with the 3G network, which is also based on the Chinese developed TD-SCDMA format.

On the web: China Market Intelligence

Posted to the site on 15th October 2008