China Unicom to double 4G base stations
China Unicom, China’s second largest mobile operator, awarded
five vendors contracts to install and upgrade 469,000 4G base stations, with Huawei and ZTE together winning more than 80 per cent of the procurement volume.

The new contracts cover 167,000 new base stations in 106 cities and upgrading the capacity of 302,000 sites in 228 cities, C114.net reported.

ZTE took a 44 per cent share, while Huawei won a 37 per cent share. Ericsson will supply about 11 per cent and Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell together will provide the remaining 7 per cent.

The new deployments will almost double China Unicom’s 4G base stations to 900,000 this year.

AIS signs up 5M 4G users in 2 months
Thailand’s largest operator AIS said it signed up five million 4G customers in the first two months since launching the service in late December.

AIS said it has extended its network coverage to 59 provinces and expects to cover the entire country by the middle of the year. The operator, which won 1.8GHz spectrum for $1.1 billion in November, is investing around THB34 billion ($953 million) this year to roll out its 4G network.

Taiwan handset shipments to drop in Q1
Handset shipments by Taiwan-based brand vendors and ODMs are expected to decline 11.4 per cent year-on-year in Q1 to 15.55 million, according to DigiTimes Research.

Combined shipments by HTC, Asustek Computer and Acer are forecast to slide 7-8 per cent sequentially in Q1, while those shipped by ODMs, including Compal, Foxconn, Arima and Wistron, are expected to drop 20 per cent, the research firm estimated.

Shipments of some models to Sony Mobile and Microsoft by local ODMs will continue to decrease in Q1 as these models enter the end-of-line phase. Microsoft has not released orders for new models to ODMs, affecting Q1 shipments of its partners Foxconn and Arima. However, Compal will see its shipments increase slightly in the quarter thanks to orders from China-based LeEco.

Samsung looks to expand VR content in Indonesia
South Korea’s Samsung is looking to boost its virtual reality (VR) offering in Indonesia by partnering with local mobile application developers to create content for the expanding service.

Following the Indonesian launch of the technology earlier this week, Samsung said it would start searching for local developers later this year to create local content for the domestic market, the Jakarta Post reported.

Indonesian developers will mostly be responsible for creating content, and not the ecosystem, which will be handled by Samsung.