“Apple Inc has signed with China Telecom to sell its iPhone in China from next month as it looks to boost its flagging share of the world’s biggest mobile phone market,” Lee Chyen Yee and Huang Yuntao report for Reuters.
“While Apple has now signed up with two of China’s big three carriers, the biggest, China Mobile Ltd, with more than 600 million subscribers, doesn’t yet have compatible technology,” Yee and Yuntao report. “China Mobile has been aggressively negotiating with Apple to sell the iPhone, but it uses a home-grown proprietary 3G technology called TD-SCDMA that Apple doesn’t support. It is, however, trialling its 4G TD-LTE network, with a commercial launch expected late this year or early in 2013, which will serve as a precursor to a deal with Apple.”
Yee and Yuntao report, “China Telecom, valued at more than $46 billion but still ranked the smallest of China’s big three carriers, said on Tuesday it would take online applications for the iPhone 4S from March 2, and aimed to commence sales on March 9, bundling a phone with a service contract. It follows China Unicom in striking a deal to sell the popular iPhone in a mobile market where the total number of subscribers rose 1.2 percent last month to 987.58 million.”
Read more in the full article here.
Great news. This and the confirmation of retina display will send share price to the moon.
What is a “flagging share”?
That’s a floppy sag.
It’s something most of us guys get as we approach the age of 60. 😉
Apple’s number of iPhone sales in China increased dramatically last quarter but so did everyone else. As a result, Apple’s iPhone actually lost a few market share points.
They are talking about China Telecom’s loss of share, not Apple’s CT is hoping that by having the iPhone, their share will grow.