Loosely translated, the above means “plenty of thunder, but little rain,” and that’s how the Chinese sum up Nokia’s professed enthusiasm for TD-SCDMA on the one hand, against its utter lack of any tangible products on the other. But hey, can you blame Nokia? It’s being brow-beaten into developing a phone for a niche 3G technology that will compete against mature technologies in a market that globally hasn’t lived up to its hype, irrespective of the technology used.

Nokia says it should have something on the Chinese market by the end of the year. It blames the failure of an associated chip venture, Commit, for some of the delay, but also notes that the TD-SCDMA market has been slow to take off. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. Common sense dictates that Nokia can’t be the saviour of TD-SCDMA.

Companies naturally gravitate toward lower risk, higher return, not the other way around. It’s a no-brainer for Nokia to stick with W-CDMA and CDMA EV-DO in China, since it can squeeze more mileage out of sunk R&D investments. Nevertheless, Nokia’s hardy stupid, and knows that it has to at least make some sort of offering to satisfy China Mobile and to keep Chinese policymakers happy. After all, Samsung has done it, along with LG and Motorola. And with subsidy money flowing more freely now at China Mobile, the risk is reduced somewhat.

But the fact remains that the supply chain for TD-SCDMA is weak. If China Mobile doesn’t make big gains this year in signing up users, then suppliers will be more reluctant to support TD. In the end, Chinese policymakers are getting what they deserve, and presumably what some of them wanted. Currently, Chinese companies like ZTE, Huawei and Yulong are grabbing the lion’s share of the TD-SCDMA 3G market – problem is, Chinese consumers still favour foreign brands, especially when shelling out more RMB for high-end phones. But this is partly what China’s telecom reform was about – weakening market leader China Mobile while strengthening China Unicom and China Telecom. At the very least, TD-SCDMA is a good solution for that.

For a decent Chinese-language wrap-up, check this link