China Mobile, the largest mobile phone operator in the country, plans to invest 600 million yuan to finance mobile phone makers in a bid to speed up development of TD-SCDMA phones, an official said.

"The cooperation between China Mobile and mobile phone makers helps to develop better and cheaper 3G phones for users," China Business News reported, citing Miao Wei, vice-minister of industry and information technology.

Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile, said earlier that the cooperation targets include both domestic and foreign mobile phone makers.

"At present, there is only a small group of 3G mobile phone users, and mobile phone makers are unwilling to invest much for such a small group. Therefore, the existing 3G phones are expensive and of poor quality. The models are not enough either," Miao said.

"Those mobile phone makers that make a timely response to the plan will finally get paid," said Miao.

After issuance of 3G licenses, the next tasks for the ministry are to prevent repetitious network construction among operators, invest more in next-generation technologies such as 4G and further promote cooperation between operators, phone makers and research institutes, according to Miao.

(China Daily March 6, 2009)