“Apple Inc. is preparing to ship iPhones to China Mobile Ltd., people familiar with the matter say, an indication that a long-awaited deal between the two companies is in place,” Daisuke Wakabayashi, Lorraine Luk, Ian Sherr and Paul Mozur report for The Wall Street Journal. “A deal would cap years of negotiations between the two companies. Apple has tried to hammer out a deal with China’s largest wireless carrier that has 700 million subscribers, seven times the size of the U.S.’s largest wireless carrier Verizon Wireless. Greater China is Apple’s third biggest market after the U.S. and Europe in terms of sales.”
“It isn’t clear if Apple and China Mobile have signed an official sales agreement, but the fact that Apple is planning to ship phones implies a deal has been struck,” Wakabayashi, Luk, Sherr and Mozur report. “On Tuesday, Apple will unveil two new iPhones slated to ship this September, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, including a new high-end model and a cheaper version.”
Wakabayashi, Luk, Sherr and Mozur report, “Apple has asked Foxconn, its longtime contract manufacturing partner, to add China Mobile to the list of carriers slated to receive a new low-cost iPhone, one of these people said. It isn’t clear when the phones would be delivered.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Boom!
If the phones are made at Foxconn and sent to Chinese customers then, there’s really no ship involved.
Just being nit-picky with the headline.
We fanboys drool at shiny new Apple products. But a deal of this magnitude, opening the door to 750 potential Chinese customers, in addition to rumors of a DoCoMo announcement in Japan, could vastly expand the addressable market for Apple iPhones. In addition, if Apple does indeed announce a 5C lower cost iPhone (primarily for Asia and the third world), the potential for sales and market share increases in China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa and Latin America would be enormous.
In recent months, Tim Cook has been subject to a lot of criticism, guilty for not being Steve Jobs. The problem with that argument is that nobody else could be Steve Jobs. Instead, it appears that Mr. Cook and his team have quietly and persistently worked concluding what have been very challenging negotiations with two of the world’s largest mobile phone carriers. We know the negotiations, which have dragged on for years, have been enormously difficult. If Mr. Cook can pull these and other negotiations off successfully, he deserves all the credit.
This could be a very significant week ahead.
BOOM BOOM !
That’s two booms in a week..
China’s loss it has taken them this long.
Puzzling thing is Foxcon doesnt make the 5c. Another phone that actually is low cost coming?