Chengdu, China's third telecom city

Connected World Forum 2011, CHENGDU, CHINA: Focusing solely on next-generation mobile communications technology and business trends, organized by Chengdu hi-tech zone and Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, has successfully been held in Chengdu, China, and attracted worldwide major telecommunication personnel from China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Docomo, and Korea Telecom.

Chengdu, located in West China, the capital of Sichuan province, has gained fast development in the telecommunication industry in recent years, and has gradually become the third communication city after Beijing and Shenzhen. In the north, Beijing, as the country's political and cultural center, is home to a large number of enterprises in these sectors from different parts of the world.

In the south, the coastal city, Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, has always been at the forefront of the reforms and opening up, and has two industry leaders, Huawei and ZTE. However, Chengdu has managed to become a sort of third leg of this information and communication transformation.

Chengdu has a large talent pool for research and development. In the 1950s, China's State Council decided to set the city up as a communications technology R&D base to meet national defense demands, and in 1956 established the Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology to educate a large pool of communications technology personnel in research and development.

As for now, Chengdu has more than 70 research institutes, 30 plus enterprise technology centers, 50 plus state-level research labs, and around 40 institutes of higher education providing IT related programs, including Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology, Sichuan University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu University of Information Technology, etc.

According to the latest public statistics, there are 2.27 million technicians and engineers working in the city, among them, of which 220,000 people are employed in the software industry. The Chengdu labor market in the sector is very stable with low turnover rate, 8 percent, in comparison to other cities in China.

"Go West" has become the irreversible trend of IT industry
When the financial crisis hit the global IT industry in 2008, a series of transfers began to take place. Chengdu, with sound infrastructure, preferential policies, low operating costs, plenty of human resources, and good services, became one focus of this global IT industrial transfer.

As for November of 2011, there are now 207 of the Fortune Global 500 firms, including IBM, Alcatel, Siemens, GE, Cisco, Ericsson, SAP, and Accenture, operating in Chengdu. Of the world's top 20 software firms, 11 have a presence there. In October 2010, Forbes magazine put Chengdu at the top of its list of The World's Fastest-Growing Cities over the next decade.

In July of this year, Fortune magazine called Chengdu one of the best emerging business cities in the world. A senior economist from Asian Development Bank has noted that inland cities, such as Chengdu, have the conditions to attract firms from coastal metropolises who are trying to escape the high cost of land, production and traffic.

Currently, Chengdu has a large number of World-class enterprises, mainly covering three sectors in the communication industry. By November of this year, the world's major communications equipment manufacturers -- Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, and ZTE -- all had research institutes there. Among them, Huawei research institute will gather over 10 000 engineers to focus on TD-LTE's research and development in line with China's 4G standard.

In the communications chip area, Freescale, Fujitsu, MediaTek, and Marvell are all in Chengdu; meanwhile, in mobile terminals, Foxconn, Dell, Lenovo, and TCL have successively located here. At present, 50 percent of all laptop computer chips are tested in Chengdu, and 20 percent of all computers worldwide, as well as 70 percent of Apple iPads will be produced here.

To share the technology innovation of mobile communication, build the exchange platform of industry information, and discover the future market opportunity of industries, Chengdu hi-tech zone and Chengdu Tianfu Software Park have organized two of China's professional summits, Connected World Forum in December of 2010 and 2011, focusing solely on next-generation mobile communications technology and business trends. The ideas and views generated at these summits have been leading the development of next generation mobile communication industry.

Chengdu, the emerging city of mobile communication, with a large talent pool and a booming industry environment, has gradually become the third city of China's telecommunication industry.