Standards Development as Hybridization

Abstract

While users in the rest of the World have been offered 3G mobile phones based on either the CDMA2000 or W-CDMA standards, users in China have the additional option of using phones based on the TD-SCDMA standard. As a technology largely developed by Chinese actors and only implemented in China, TD-SCDMA has been seen as an "indigenous innovation" orchestrated by the Chinese government and supported by Chinese firms. This paper adopts a science and technology studies STS framework to explore how global and national institutional and social elements have been embedded in and impacted on the artifacts of TD-SCDMA technology. Rather than being an indigenous Chinese technology, TD-SCDMA's history exemplifies how standards and the intellectual property embedded in them lead to a complex hybridization between the global and national systems of innovation.