iPhones finally on-sale in China Mobile stores, 1 million pre-orders so far
China Mobile’s subsidies not as attractive as the other two carriers
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO has arrived in China for a very special event. After tough negotiations, Apple’s iPhones go on-sale in all China Mobile stores across the country. The deal was completed back in December 2013 and now both companies can benefit from each other. On one hand, Apple’s products can reach a large number of potential customers. China Mobile has currently around 760 million subscribers, and indeed, it is the largest mobile phone operator in the world. One the other hand, even more customers could join the wireless network after the iPhone arrival and China Mobile could grow even further. But that’s just in a theory.
At first glance, China Mobile’s offerings don’t look as attractive as the other two carriers in the country selling Apple’s product. But the largest carrier has one major advantage. All customers who buy iPhone through the carrier can benefit from the high-speed 4G network; hence the carrier could still edge out the competition despite the higher prices. In fact, China Mobile hit more than 1 million pre-orders for iPhones, upon the launch yesterday. But let’s compare the offerings.
China Mobile starts selling the 16 GB Apple iPhone 5s for free with a new 24-month contract and monthly payments of $97. The other two options are $625 up-front and 24 payments of $31 or $873 off-contract. By comparison, on China Telecom, the iPhone 5s costs nothing with a new 24-month contract and a monthly cost of $64. Through the third operator, China Unicom, iPhone 5s is $898 without an agreement or for free with a 30-month contract and monthly cost of $63.
After the Chinese government issued 4G licenses to the largest wireless operators last year, only China Mobile is ready to offer high data speeds, hence the iPhone pricing is reasonable, especially taking into account the information that the download speeds using both new iPhones on China Mobile’s 4G network are twice as fast as the speeds offered by China Unicom.
Source: The Next Web
