The South China Morning Post reports:

Datang Mobile Communications Equipment, one of the mainland’s leading homegrown 3G mobile technology developers, yesterday announced partnerships with software giant Microsoft and computer maker Dell to expand products and applications for the new platform.

The news came as China Mobile Communications Corp, which operates TD-SCDMA trial services in 10 cities, is expanding the mobile telephone technology to other cities under the government’s urging.

Datang Mobile and Microsoft signed a memorandum in Beijing to jointly develop a series of new products related to TD-SCDMA 3G devices and software applications.

The co-operation includes studying the compatibility of the TD-SCDMA mobile data card with the next generation of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. A mobile data card enables laptop computer users to surf the internet on the 3G network.

…Datang Mobile will collaborate with Dell China on the bundled sale of Dell’s laptop computers and Datang Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G mobile data card.

Several models of Dell laptop computers will have built-in TD-SCDMA 3G features. However, the companies did not announce when the new products would hit the market.

It’s interesting that Dell is involved rather than Lenovo. They are China’s top PC firm and are already integrating 3G modems (although not TD-SCDMA) into their laptops.

Anyways, integrated 3G for laptops have been around for a few years, so it’s not like this is ground-breaking stuff. Indeed, the whole “partnership” smacks of PR flackery rather than anything substantive. The data cards will work on other laptops just as well as Dell’s and there are no firm commitments on when Dell will roll out the integrated 3G models.

The real questions are: 1) who will subsidize the cards bundled with the Dell laptops, and 2) will China Mobile throw in a subsidy for the service fees?

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