Motorola Mobility announced the release of its MOTO MT870 smartphone, which it said it is the first device with a dual-core processor to support China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network technology. The Android 2.3-powered handset is also the first to feature a “brand new, combined Mobile Market-SHOP4APPS application store,” bringing together the catalogues of China Mobile and Motorola respectively. MOTO MT870 has a 4-inch touch screen, an 8MP camera, and 8GB of internal memory. It is priced at CNY4,680 (US$724).

Recovering handset maker Motorola has previously identified China as a target market, with analyst firm Canalys stating that this country’s smartphone market saw “triple-digit” growth in the first quarter of 2011. Android is also the platform with the momentum in this region, aided by its use in devices from vendors including HTC, Samsung and LG Electronics. Sanjay Jha, chairman and CEO of Motorola, said that China is the vendor’s second largest market after the US, and that it has “a tradition of creating premium devices and premium experiences specifically for Chinese people.” According to China Daily, Jha told a conference in China that the company had sold more than one million smartphones into the Chinese market by the end of the first quarter of 2011, compared with around 2.2 million in the full 2010 year.