Wang Jianzhou, the 63 years old chairman of China Mobile Ltd retired this Wednesday, succeeded by his vice chairman—Xi Guohua. The news caused shares of China Mobile, to rise 2.3 percent on Wednesday, outperforming the Hang Seng Index's 0.2 percent dip.

As with all leaders, Wang has his supporters and critics.

Supporters described Wang as an “ambitious leader fond of challenges and value strategy”. In his days, China Mobile dominated the telecommunication market of rural area and united 32 subsidiaries. In 2006, Wang ranked 14th by Business Week in “The Best Boss worldwide” as one of the first entrepreneurs from mainland awarded this honor. 

However, many employees of China Mobile complained of their poor salary and heavy workload. Moreover, despite of a 5-year-long marathon negotiation, Wang still failed to reach an agreement with Apple on getting I-phone to support TD-SCDMA technology (China Mobile’s core tech).

That leaves a serious challenge for his successor XI, as the future telecommunication market of China is definitely a world of 3G.

"The industry trend is to migrate to 3G. In that sense, China Mobile's network is an issue because they are using TD-SCDMA. And they have supply chain issues on the handsets," said Michael Meng, an analyst at BOC International. "China Telecom and China Unicom will take market share from China Mobile."