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Apple Discussing Plans To Bring iPhone To China

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 11:45 CDT

Talks between a top Chinese mobile carrier and Apple Inc. are in progress as both companies aim to bring the iPhone to China for the first time.

"Discussions are still ongoing, we have not reached any formal agreement," Sophia Tso, a spokeswoman for China Unicom, told Shanghai Securities News on Tuesday.

Under the ongoing agreement, China Unicom will become the exclusive carrier of the iPhone for a period of three years.

China Unicom will buy its phones from Apple for 3,000 yuan ($439) each, with guaranteed annual sales of 1 million to 2 million and at least 5 billion yuan in revenue each year, according to the newspaper.

According to the Washington Post, Apple has said that it expected its iPhones to be sold in China by the end of the year.

"Both sides have their own time frame for an agreement but essentially it depends on the practical progress of the negotiations," said a Unicom spokesman.

China Unicom is among the nation’s top three mobile providers, although its estimated 130 million subscribers are far behind China Mobile’s 415 million subscribers.

However, China Mobile connects its mobile phones to a TD-SCDMA network, which is exclusive to China, while China Unicom will soon be using the 3G network that Apple’s iPhone is designed to run on.

"iPhone provides strong online experience, which is quite appealing to users," Dai Chunrong, a Beijing-based analyst with CITIC Securities, told AFP.

"The competition structure in the 3G era will certainly be reshuffled," she said.



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Source: redOrbit staff

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