Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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CDMA cell phone to navigate auto driving
UPDATED: 16:54, September 06, 2005

http://english.people.com.cn/200509/06/eng20050906_206913.html

A new model of CDMA cell phone with a positioning system will embed its speech sound telecommunications and map navigation services into the navigation business of automobiles. The new telecommunications business will be on offer nationwide by the end of this month at the soonest, which was announced by China United Telecommunications Corporation (China Unicom) and Qualcomm on Sept. 5 in Beijing, according to the Beijing Times published on September 6.

China Unicom has started trial operation of the business, which is expected to be available for commercial use before the coming National Day (October 1), disclosed Zhai Yibing, deputy general manager of China Unicom's Value-added Service Department.

According to its initial planning, the phone charges will be composed of two parts: one part will be paid monthly, which will be fixed at 18 yuan per month; another part will be for Internet charges. Take Beijing for example, packaged Internet Internet use costs 35 yuan a month now.

However, the price for mobiles backing up auto navigation is still comparatively high. Zhai introduced that China Unicom has already reached an agreement with Samsung to purchase its Model W219 phone as China Unicom's first batch phones to be sold on China's domestic market and the price is fixed at about 4,000 yuan.

In addition, China Unicom has started cooperation with many Sino-foreign cell phone firms and enterprises, including LG and TCL in order to accelerate the testing of auto navigation phones. It is scheduled that new medium- and low-end navigation phone models will arrive at the market in one or two months.

In Japan and the United States, the mobile phone navigation business has begun to have an impact on traditional satellite navigators. According to the statistics released by global authoritative organizations, the number of vehicles equipped with navigators in China is expected to reach 100,000 sets valued 7.5 to 15 billion yuan. Cell phone navigation will hopefully become a new and major growth point for the data business of telecom operators.

By People's Daily Online