Will Unicom fumble the iPhone?
October 16, 2009
After all this time, the iPhone is now a mere fortnight away from it legitimate arrival in China.
In the two years since Apple started negotiations with Chinese telecoms operators, 1.5 million iPhones have already arrived, of course.
Nevertheless, the iPhone represents the greatest competitive advantage that China Unicom may ever have against China Mobile, which has three-quarters of the market.
China Mobile, of course, is unable to sell iPhones even if it wanted to because it uses China's proprietary TD-SCDMA coding system for 3G, which requires much larger handsets.
At the moment, the black market iPhones rely on cracked operating systems, but when fully-functional 3G iPhones arrive, Chinese programmers are likely to innovate a host of applications that will make the phone indispensable, and could tip the scales in favour of 3G.
So far 3G has had a lukewarm reception in China, with just 2.8 million...
In the two years since Apple started negotiations with Chinese telecoms operators, 1.5 million iPhones have already arrived, of course.
Nevertheless, the iPhone represents the greatest competitive advantage that China Unicom may ever have against China Mobile, which has three-quarters of the market.
China Mobile, of course, is unable to sell iPhones even if it wanted to because it uses China's proprietary TD-SCDMA coding system for 3G, which requires much larger handsets.
At the moment, the black market iPhones rely on cracked operating systems, but when fully-functional 3G iPhones arrive, Chinese programmers are likely to innovate a host of applications that will make the phone indispensable, and could tip the scales in favour of 3G.
So far 3G has had a lukewarm reception in China, with just 2.8 million...
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