"Now we also have a well-known 3G smartphone brand (after China Mobile's Ophone and China Unicom's iPhone)," said a China Telecom's Shanghai branch official, who declined to be identified.

China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line phone operator, is using the CDMA (code division multiple access) 3G technology, claimed as the fastest of the three 3G technologies in China. But the CDMA technology suffers from limited cell phone choices, especially in the smartphone category, compared with China Unicom's WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) technology.

In the third quarter, smartphone sales globally grew 12.1 percent year on year to 41.06 million units, compared with the 0.1 percent rise for the total handset market, according to Gartner Inc, a United States-based IT research firm.