“China Telecom, the smallest of China’s three wireless carriers, may become the second Chinese operator to offer Apple’s popular iPhone after an exclusive agreement with one of its rivals expires, local media reported on Friday,” Doug Young reports for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Note: China Telecom has 43 million mobile subscribers. For reference, in the U.S., Verizon Wireless has over 92 million subscribers, AT&T Mobility has over 90 million, Sprint has about 48 million,, and T-Mobile has approximately 34 million.
Young reports, “China Unicom, the nation’s No.2 carrier, is the only Chinese carrier selling the iPhone, but its exclusivity deal with Apple is likely to expire early next year, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a Deutsche Bank analyst note. That would open up the way for China Telecom, which operates a 3G network based on a standard called CDMA 2000, to offer iPhones, as Apple prepares to launch an iPhone model that runs on that standard, the paper said. Unicom began offering the iPhone 4 in China late last month, and said that pre-orders for the popular phone exceeded 200,000 units in the first two days it became available.”
MacDailyNews Note: China Unicom has roughly 135 million GSM subscribers.
Young reports, “China’s largest carrier, China Mobile, has said in the past it was in talks with Apple to carry the iPhone, and has also said it was talking to the U.S. company about developing an iPhone that runs on TD-SCDMA, the home-grown standard it is using in its 3G network.”
MacDailyNews Note: China Mobile has the world’s largest mobile phone subscriber base with over 510 million customers.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
