Wang Jianzhou said that Apple has not come to any agreement with the China Mobile network in regards to selling the iPhone, but China Mobile has over 10 million iPhone users already. According to the news, Wang said that Apple was going to come up with an iPhone that is compatible with the China TD-LTE network when the original iPhone 4G models was released, but at this time, nothing has been put on paper. A couple of statements from Wang showed that Apple and China Mobile did agree that when Apple made an LTE compatible iPhone, one would be manufactured for TD-LTE. As of right now, details are still in the works.
Over in China, the only network that actually sells the iPhone is China Unicom. They offer the iPhone to customers and pay Apple the subsidies. China Mobile claims the 10 million iPhone users, but says they have not paid a penny in subsidies. Wang said that China Mobile is working on new technology for TD-LTE networks and trials will start in some Chinese cities soon. China Mobile is the largest mobile carrier in the world and they have roughly 630 million subscribers at the end of September of this year. Of those 630 million subscribers, a large portion of them are actually low-end users that only make voice calls and send regular texts via regular or feature phones.
China Mobile has met with the late Steve Jobs in the past to talk about bringing the iPhone to the TD-LTE network. Of the three networks in China, all of them have seen falling revenue per user by offering cheaper phones in hopes of getting subscribers hooked on a more expensive phone down the road. The iPhone being offered by China Unicom helped users get used to the faster data services and a huge amount of apps available in the Apple App Store.
If the iPhone gets into China for each of the three carriers, the revenues will climb just like they do for any carrier in the United States that has added the iPhone. With so many subscribers, it would be foolish for Apple to not make some sort of deal with China Mobile, as well as, the other networks. For now, phones from Samsung and HTC are what is driving the main smartphone sales.
