“China Telecom Corp. has launched a powerful promotion in a bid to boost sales of iPhones in Beijing,” Grace Cao reports for The Standard.
“Customers who buy 10 iPhone 4S sets together and register for a plan at the same time will be given another iPhone,” Cao reports. “A China Telecom spokesman said the promotion was aimed at corporate clients who are providing members of their staffs with cutting-edge communication tools.”
Cao reports, “Subsidizing iPhone sales dampened first-quarter earnings even though the telecom giant only started selling the devices in March… China Unicom, which was the first telco to secure iPhone selling rights in the mainland, recorded a 82.60-percent surge in smartphone subsidies last year from 2010.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Any carrier that is capable of doing basic math knew the score when they signed on the dotted line for iPhone. iPhone subsidy costs are no surprise to carriers. (BTW: Any carrier that claims otherwise is either incompetent or lying.)
If subsidizing iPhone sales are “dampening earnings,” then iPhone must be delivering something more valuable (reduced churn, higher plan rates, etc.) or they wouldn’t be trying to sell iPhones at all, much less in blocks of 11!
[Attribution: M.I.C. Gadget. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]