China Mobile admits to flexing its muscles

IN A very telling remark made in an interview with the FT, China Mobile´s chairman - Wang Jianzhou - admits that his company can throw its weight around with suppliers. And get a 50 per cent discount.

It´s not often that a mobile operator - especially the world´s largest in terms of both subscribers and market capitalisation - readily admits how much it can use its size to extract maximum concessions from suppliers.

But in his comments about his company´s recent acquisition of China Resources Peoples in Hong Kong, Mr Wang said,"We do central procurement so our cost is low. Since, we bought Peoples, it only has to pay half of what it used to pay for the same equipment.

Another startling admission for WiFi fanatics. China Mobile actually covers an impressive 97 per cent of all Chinese people - even the rural areas and expects to hit 98 per cent by Q1 2007.

Another bizarre fact is that some of the poorest subscribers are actually keen on the kind of mobile data that nobody in the West really uses. Namely weather updates and crop prices.

As usual, however, Mr Wang could give no indication of how soon China will actually award 3G licences. And when it does so, whether China´s own home-grown 3G technology - TD-SCDMA - will get a look in. To the detriment of W-CDMA of course! µ