HTC And China Mobile Have A Baby: Meet The Qilin

"Dopod CEO Dennis Chen said the Qilin handset is the first result of China Mobile's $7 million in subsidies to encourage TD-SCDMA handset development. Dopod has expanded investment in manpower and funding towards TD-SCDMA R&D and will release numerous high-end TD-SDCMA (sic) handsets next year."

The HTC Qilin has some pretty good genes: WM 6.5, 600MHz TI OMAP processor, 3.6" WVGA screen, GPS, 5MP camera, and CMMB Mobile TV and is apparently based on HTC's Whitestone design. The TD-SCDMA standard is China's home-grown 3G standard, which means that the Qilin won't have access to 3G networks outside of China. Having said that, HTC and China Mobile have just signed an MOU to partner up in R&D, market research, and product development (read the press release here), so the Qilin will be just the first in a series of handsets HTC will develop for China Mobile. Scuttlebutt has it that another 6 models are under development, and China Mobile are working on expanding TD-SCDMA (and the TD-LTE 4G standard) adoption outside of China. The Qilin is slated for release in December, which puts it just in time for runup to the Chinese New Year holidays.