More phones are hitting the market for China’s CMMB, a domestically developed mobile TV standard that rival’s Europe’s DVB-H and Qualcomm’s MediaFLO. Smartphones from China's Qigi are a good example of the types of phones being released. Its U6, a Windows Mobile 6.0 platform, supports CMMB, GPRS/EDGE, and Wi-Fi (11g). It’s also one of the first Chinese smartphones I’ve seen that incorporates a fingerprint reader, which are more commonly seen on Lenovo’s higher-end Thinkpad notebook PCs. (Acer, Asus and others are also incorporating fingerprint acanners)

Here’s a link to the Qigi  specs and another link to a Chinese-language review, with lots of pics, so it’s worth taking a look even if you don’t read Chinese. Note the nifty antenna that doubles as a stylus.

Qigi’s hardly the first to launch a phone for CMMB. Hisense Group has released the TM86 and Yulong Computer has rolled out the Coolpad 6168V – both phones supposedly support TD-SCDMA-based 3G from China Mobile. There are also more and more small players launching 2G/CMMB phones that cost about RMB700, a little over US$100.

It’s pretty clear that DVB-H and MediaFLO haven’t got a chance in China. Qualcomm has pretty much given up on getting MediaFLO into China, but is still pushing for India. In China, the powerful regulator SARFT helped develop CMMB and is shepherding its rollout. It’s already available in 37 cities, including all provincial capitals and large cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing.