China Mobile & Symbian state they will "collaborate on a series of key initiatives to improve the mobile ecosystem in China and to stimulate the development of the market for China Mobile's locally developed 3G network standard, TD-SCDMA."
The real deal is in China Mobile's new app store, which has been launched in advance of Apple's recent deal with China Unicom. Mobile Market will now support Symbian Signed services, allowing local developers to access the platform for a single test bed for Symbian based apps for China Mobile. Surprisingly enough, at this point, more than 50% of the current apps included in Mobile Market are based on Symbian. At last count, Mobile Market carried 2,000 apps. Symbian has also recently launched a new Chinese-language website to drive developer involvement.
So what's the news for Nokia (NYSE: NOK) here ? Simply this, the Mobile Market is based on China Mobile's TD-SCDMA 3G network protocol, Symbian is heavily prdicated on Nokia's S60 operating system, so the way is clear for Nokia to clean up with China's largest mobile network. Nokia has a very good working relationship with China Mobile & has been instrumental in helping the carrier in developing & rolling out it's proprietary 3G network. Nokia also disclosed in August, that it will begin shipping TD-SCDMA enabled handsets towards the end of this year, the devices are expected to be mid-high range, supporting a number of the apps from Mobile Store.
Also crucially, Chinese search giant Baidu (NYSE:BIDU) has enetered into a deal with Nokia to embed its search technology in these handsets. The Chinese mobile internet market has been slow to take off, mainly due to the late arrival of 3G networks to support the data throughput, however in Q2 this year, mobile search sessions doubled from the same period in 2008. 270 million Web searches were performed on mobile phones in the period & Baidu accounted for a 26% share.
So, way to go Symbian, this deal is opening up a brave new world & nicely played for Nokia, who are obviously playing the long game with regards to China. The markets are obviously paying attention, as Nokia's ADR has been performing very well since last weeks Nokia World, the stock has gained nearly 13% in the last 5 days trading on the NYSE.
Having held this stock for what feels like forever, I must admit that I am quietly releived to see some upward movement, my take is that this is going to be a long slow burn to the upside & will be adding here & also in any dips over the next 6-9 months.
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