The mobile Media Access Portal (mMAP) system allows Tom Online to present and manage a wide variety of mobile entertainment content - including games, ring tones, wallpaper, news, competitions, video and music - on mobile phones through an on-device portal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Liu Binghai, vice-president and general manager at Tom Online's wireless application division, said: 'I believe that with Mobile Scope's mMAP solution, Tom Online can better understand our customers' behaviour, which in turn will help promote the growth of our entertainment services.'

With complete customer presentation and management functionality, mMAP also enables operators and content providers such as Tom Online to interact with their customers, according to Mobile Scope China chief executive Mingjie Guan.

ZTE unveils homegrown 3g mobile telephone

Telecommunications equipment maker ZTE has taken the lead in marketing handsets based on the homegrown TD-SCDMA third-generation cellular standard with the release of its U350 phone (above).

It is the first TD-SCDMA/GSM dual-module, dual-standby 3G handset, ZTE said. The dual-standby capability means users can put a call on hold in one mode and take a separate call on the other, and then switch between modes.

With factories in Shenzhen, ZTE has so far launched 14 3G mobile phones based on the three global standards - WCDMA, CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA. It has sold 300,000 WCDMA handsets to Hutchison Whampoa.

Research firm Ovum said TD-SCDMA 3G phones 'will have great opportunity to penetrate the low- to mid-tier markets' when 3G services finally become available on the mainland.

San system boosts digital capability of tv stations

China Provincial Gansu TV and China Provincial Guizhou TV have bolstered their move to digital broadcasting by adopting high-performance storage-area networking (SAN) systems.

The SANs from EqualLogic will be used for the broadcasters' video editing and digital content storage operations, ensuring business continuity through round-the-clock backup and disaster recovery. Financial terms were not disclosed.

'Media and broadcasting organisations in Asia are under great pressure to make the move to digital broadcasting with non-linear editing and improve operations while reducing costs,' said Steve Peabody, vice-president of worldwide sales at EqualLogic.

Gansu TV is based in northwest China, while Guizhou TV is in the southwest.

Audio compression firm chases electronics boom

European audio compression firm Coding Technologies will set up shop in Beijing next Wednesday to seek customers in China's booming consumer electronics and digital media sectors.

The privately held Stockholm-based firm will push for a wider adoption of its aacPlus audio codec, an audio compression technology that reduces the size of digital audio files to a quarter of the bit rate used by the present benchmark MP3 codec.

'We consider the Chinese audio and new media market as one of the most important growth drivers for our future business,' said Coding chief executive and president Martin Dietz.

The aacPlus codec is used by global handset manufacturers in various digital broadcasting, mobile music services and internet streaming applications.