China Unicom, the country's second largest mobile phone operator, has promised to provide more value-added telecom services based on BREW (binary runtime environment for wireless) platform to its subscribers this year.

The company announced over the weekend that its CDMA subscribers using BREW services exceeded 1 million by the end of last year in China.

This achievement highlights the continued support for the BREW system in the world's largest wireless communications market.

The BREW platform was developed by Qualcomm Inc, world leader in the development of code division multiple access (CDMA) digital wireless technology. It is part of a complete, end-to-end solution for wireless applications development, device configuration, application distribution, and billing and payment.

BREW-based services will enable consumers to customize their handsets by downloading applications.

"The BREW solution is one of the most important contributors to China Unicom's ARPU (average revenue per user)," said Lu Jianguo vice-president of China Unicom and chairman of Unicom BREW Telecommunication Technologies Ltd.

"Over the last year, BREW applications and content have become more popular and we look forward to continued success in furthering the market for commercial wireless data services."

To date, 10 million BREW applications have been downloaded by Chinese subscribers on more than 50 different handset models and approximately 200 local BREW developers are offering more than 800 BREW applications to China Unicom's subscribers.

This growth has come thanks to strong support from handset manufacturers, developers and China Unicom over the past year.

Currently, China Unicom subscribers are using a broad range of BREW services, including mobile banking, mobile TV, ring-tone downloads and 3D gaming.

BREW enterprise applications are proving particularly successful as an increasing number of small and medium-size businesses, government agencies and institutions are using the BREW platform for tax payments, mobile voting, social security information and healthcare applications.

Sales of BREW-based applications and content have resulted in profitability for a large percentage of the 200-strong BREW developer base in China.

To date, there are 37 commercial operators in 24 countries offering wireless services based on the BREW solution.

(China Daily February 7, 2005)