China Mobile has taken the wraps off its OPhone operating system.
Just days after rival Unicom won worldwide headlines with a deal to bring the iPhone to China, the mobile giant has launched its new Android-based platform.
CEO Wang Jianzhou told a Beijing press conference yesterday that Lenovo, Dell, LG, Dopod, Philips and Hisense had already developed OPhone products, which would be available commercially “straight away”.
He said altogether more than 20 handset-makers were making phones based on the platform.
Wang described OPhone as the “world’s first operator-developed” smartphone OS.
In an interview with sina.com he said the company aimed for a target price of 1000 yuan ($146) for TD-SCDMA phones.
As well as the new OPhone operating system, China Mobile yesterday also launched SDK developer tools and a developers’ network.