Apple’s iPhone, Tim Cook and 900 million Chinese wireless users

Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune, “Brian White, Ticonderoga Securities’ chief Apple analyst, has a boilerplate sentence stored on his computer that goes like this: ‘”We believe the ramp of the mobile Internet in China will be one of the great wonders of the tech world over the next decade and the country has clearly caught “Apple fever” that we believe will only accelerate as the company expands it carrier base to include both China Mobile and China Telecom.'”

P.E.D. reports, “White may be right about the significance of these reports over the next decade, but it’s too soon for Apple investors to start counting those hundreds of million subscribers.”

Read more in the full article here.

15 Comments

  1. What did Confucius say about Tim Cook’s visit to China?

    “When you sleep with images of a thousand virgins in mind, you wake up with solution in hand.”

    1. Hey Lynn while you’re scouring the Internet for Apple newsfeeds your husband is playing with his Toshiba. Do you feel like throwing him out through the ‘Windows’ sometimes?

      1. Not really, Windows does the dirty work. No need to get my hands dirty. BTW, news flash he’s using his iPad quite a bit and is in the process of purchasing some new Macs etc. for the large yacht he’s employed on. We have a new convert here.

        1. Often I find going cold turkey is the best way to kick an addiction. Listen, just throw his Toshiba overboard then say, “Your Windows POS sleeps with the fishes tonight.” That ought to wean him of Ballmer’s left tit.

    1. Since iPhones are made in China, it’s more like they are buying from themselves.

      But I get your point – Apple will be collecting something in the transaction.

      Now if they repatriate those funds….

    1. Michael, your observation is correct, however, keep in mind that China’s “middle class” population is about 2/3s of the total population of the US.

      FWIW, during the ’90s and early ’00s I did quite a bit of telecom business in China. They are hungry for ‘modern’ technology, but they still think in 5 year goals. It causes things to move more slowly than it does here.

      1. 200 million middle class households is still a WAY bigger market than the US. I wonder how many households here can still afford the iPhone — or any cel phone service these days.

  2. I’m in Beijing now (from Ohio) and I have seen a huge number of natives with iPhones and itouches and tons of billboard ads for iPads, iPhones, and iPods, and also tons of authorized resellers in malls that put apple ads front and center.

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