“In the past few days, China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile telecom operator by subscribers, said it was teaming up with Taiwanese smart phone maker, HTC Corp., to launch an iPhone clone, dubbed the Ophone. Meanwhile, China Telecom signed agreements to purchase 4 million low-cost 3G handsets from 31 manufacturers,” Kwok reports. “But what could be critical is a deal between China Unicom and Apple to sell a Chinese version of Apple’s iconic iPhone.”
“Shares of China Unicom rose 2.7% to $14.13 in Thursday afternoon trading after news broke in Hong Kong that Unicom could announce the launch of an iPhone in China as early as Friday,” Kwok reports.
“A spokeswoman for China Unicom, the country’s No. 2 mobile player, confirmed that the company will discuss its iPhone deal with Apple during a scheduled Friday press conference to report its half-year earnings,” Kwok reports. “She declined to disclose whether Unicom has in fact signed an agreement with Apple.”
“Each of China’s three carriers were “awarded the rights to make use of different 3G standards by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,” Kwok reports. “Unicom was given a WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access ) license. China Mobile… obtained TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), a homegrown 3G standard based on spread spectrum technology that is different from approaches used in the West). And China Telecom was allowed to develop CDMA 2000 (a hybrid 2.5 or 3G technology which built on code division multiple access, or CDMA, technology used worldwide.”
Kwok reports, “Among the three, China Unicom’s WCDMA is regarded as the leading 3G approach. What’s more, it’s the only 3G technology used by the iPhone.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s earnings may have set some company records lately, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. 血浴
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090828-705326.html