China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier with over 655 million subscribers, is in talks with Apple to bring the iPhone to its homegrown 3G (TD-SCDMA) network. The carrier’s chairman, Xi Guohua, confirmed the discussions during a shareholders meeting earlier this week.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Beijing today, meeting Chinese officials as the Cupertino company eyes up further growth in China. It’s his first trip to the country since he took over from Steve Jobs as CEO, and he got himself noticed with a visit Apple’s Beijing store where he stopped to pose for photographs with fans.
China Telecom has become the second Chinese carrier to offer the iPhone 4S today, ending the exclusivity enjoyed by China Unicom for the last 18 months. The company announced back in February that it would begin selling Apple’s popular smartphone from March 9, and it has taken over 200,000 pre-orders in just the last week.
Apple is yet to strike a deal with China Mobile over the iPhone, but that hasn’t stopped the Cupertino company from supporting China Mobile customers who want to use its latest smartphone with the carrier unofficially. Just a month after Apple confirmed that the iPhone 4S has issues with China Mobile SIM cards, it has fixed the device to eliminate signal issues.
China Telecom and Apple have officially confirmed that the carrier will get the iPhone 4S on March 9th. China Telecom’s 130 million subscribers will have access to Apple’s latest handset for $0 RMB with select carrier contracts. The device will be sold in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flavors.
Having obtained the licenses necessary to launch its new iPhone 4S on the China Telecom network earlier this month, it was only a matter of time before Apple’s deal with a second Chinese carrier came to fruition. China Telecom subsidiary Beijing Telecom has now issued a press release confirming that it will launch the iPhone 4S from as early as the end of February.
Apple will introduce the iPhone 4S in China before the the populous nation celebrates the Year of the Dragon on January 23. That’s the word from the country’s People’s Daily. According to the publication, the government Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Dec. 22 gave the tech giant the go-ahead to debut its latest device.
Apple would love to sell the iPhone to China Mobile’s 628 million subscribers, but there is a hitch to any agreement: the carrier wants a piece of the App Store pie. But a pact isn’t needed, argues one Wall Street watcher, especially since there are already 10 million Apple smartphones on the China network.
An interesting report from Bloomberg takes a look at 5 million iPhone users on the largest and most valuable carrier in the world, China Mobile. What’s surprising about China Mobile’s iPhone user base is the fact that Apple’s smartphone isn’t officially offered on the carrier.
Millions of Chinese Apple lovers are using their iPhones on a network that can’t even offer 3G data speeds for the device due to frequency incompatibilities. If that’s the case, then why are so many people content to use the iPhone on China Mobile? The answer: Wi-Fi.
China Mobile’s chairman, Wang Jianzhou, revealed in an interview today that Apple has given the carrier a “positive answer” to its request for an iPhone compatible with 4G LTE networks.
Of all the things we expect to see from Apple’s iPhone 5 in the coming months, it isn’t super-speedy LTE capabilities. However, China Mobile says that it has struck a deal with Apple to bring the next-genearation iPhone to its 4G TD-LTE network.
Apple’s iPhone is set to launch with a second carrier in China, breaking China Unicom’s current reign of exclusivity it has held since 2009. China Telecom — the country’s third-largest carrier with 106 million subscribers — is reportedly completing negotiations with Apple that will see the carrier selling the device before the end of this year.
A photograph of an iPhone prototype running on China Mobile’s 3G TD-SCDMA network strengthen rumors that Apple is set to launch the device on the world’s largest carrier — possibly as early as September.
A worker for China’s largest mobile carrier has confirmed that the iPhone 5 will launch on China Mobile in September. What does that mean for Americans? An iPhone 5 as early as August.
Apple COO Tim Cook happened to pop on by China Mobile’s headquarters earlier today. You know, just happened to be in the neighborhood, thought he’d see what was going on. No biggie.
Except China Mobile isn’t currently partnered with Apple. Oh, and they just happen to be the world’s largest mobile phone carrier, providing for over six hundred million customers. Biggie indeed.
Apple’s plans to launch a super-speedy LTE-enabled ‘4G’ iPhone later this year have reportedly been scuppered by a delay in manufacturing the chips, however, when the device does launch in 2012, it’s heading to China Mobile.