China Mobile deal officially confirmed, the iPhone to come up on January 17th
January 17th this is the date that everything will finally be official. Apple and China Mobile have been rumoured for long time now that they would strike a deal for the new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5c. However, as it seems now everything is final and the iPhone is supposed to be on both Apple and China mobile stores on January 17th.
The registering process will start on Christmas Day for all the 763 million subscribers of China Mobile. They will soon be able to register for the two cutting edge devices of the Cupertino giant. Official pricing scheme for the China Mobile Stores has not been made available yet and we can’t know if there would be any price differences between the prices of the Apple Store. Currently the unsubsidized 16GB Apple iPhone 5s will be priced at 5288 yuan ($870 USD) while the 16GB Apple iPhone 5c will cost 4488 yuan ($738 USD).
Now that the iPhone comes to the Chinese users, or at least to the carrier with the majority of them subscribed to it, there are a lot of implications that may result from this. For example, with 4G LTE service now available, the carrier may see a lot of upgrades in the approaching year and Apple may in fact profit from all of it.
Up until now the problem for Apple was that it could not offer the carrier the iPhone because of the carrier’s proprietary 3G TD-SCDMA network. However, now since that is not a problem anymore the giant maybe on its way to make a huge profit. According to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi Apple may very well be on its way to sell up to 15 million iPhones to China Mobile customers through the course of next year, which would be much appreciated by both Apple and China Mobile.
Source: WSJ
