After watching innumerable 3G commercials, a college student in China finally decides to upgrade to a 3G handset.

When Miss Zhang gets into an operator's company store, she finds only a handful of people inquiring about the 3G service.

There are only 4 3G handsets on display at the counter, 3 of them belong to the same brand, with price tags ranging from $300 to $450. The 4th one costs around $700. Zhang expresses her disappointment a little bit, and the sales person responds by saying that there are no more than a total of 20 3G handset models on the market anyway.

Like cold water on fire, the reality has doused Zhang's initial enthusiasm. A big let-down compared to what is portrayed on the exciting 3G commercials.

So goes the slow uptake of 3G in China according to a financial journal in the country today.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/3g/2009-07-16/...

According to the article, China's 3 mobile operators have targeted 50 million 3G subscribers by the end of this year. But since the issuance of 3G licenses in Jan 7 this year, subscribers of all kinds have not reached 3 m under the most optimistic estimate. Of that total, more than a million use 3G cards or 3G laptops. Among the handset users, .74m are on China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network by the end of May, including users acquired during early trials and during the Olympics last year when free give-aways and other promotions were in place. There are only .1+ m users on China Telecom's 3G service. China Unicom now aims for .2m users for its WCDMA service by the end of Oct. In stark contrast, the total population of mobile subs in China is 600m right now. Average monthly uptake in mobile subs in Q1 this year is 9.6m in China. Clearly, the initial growth of 3G has not lived up to market potential and expectation.

As for laptops with 3G circuitry built-in, there are models from HP, Samsung, and Acer. But total sales in the first 3 months since their debut is less than 100,000 pieces. China Mobile had initially launched 29 models from 17 manufacturers, with requirement for a PC manufacturer to sell 90,000 pieces in 3 months. Obviously, current sales as well as the number of handset models available on the market have both fallen way short of initial targets.