“It should cheer Apple that since last year it has doubled its market share in China: In the same quarter a year ago its share stood just shy of 10 percent. But it’s very obvious that Apple needs to do something about its carrier availability in China — and fast, if it wants to compete with Android there,” Erica Ogg reports for GigaOm.

“The reason the iPhone grew so much in the last year, analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co. points out, is that the iPhone 4S finally became available to China Telecom’s 125 million subscribers in March,” Ogg reports. “Apple also counts China Unicom as a partner, but the biggest mobile carrier in China, which is also the biggest mobile carrier in the world — China Mobile — still does not offer the iPhone.”

Ogg reports, “Apple has to figure this China Mobile situation out, or its chief mobile competitor is going to continue to own China. It’s not an easy solution, however. It’s already been reported/rumored that Apple is planning to make the next iPhone compatible with China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, which is different than almost any other 3G network on earth. As you may imagine, there are pretty important technical hurdles to that.”

Read more in the full article here.

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China Mobile: Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants to make us a 4G TD-SCDMA iPhone – March 4, 2011