US consumer technology giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is said to sign an agreement with China Mobile Ltd. (SEHK: 0941 and NYSE: CHL) on the sale of iPhones soon.
It for the first time held a press conference for the release of new products, namely iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, in the Chinese mainland on September 11, however, except a video watched several hours ago, the Chinese media saw top executives of neither it nor major Chinese telecom operators. The interview link was omitted, too. Notably, it failed to announce a cooperation with China Mobile.
Prior to this, sources said that it would held a press conference for iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C in both the US and the Chinese mainland at the same time. In addition, it would announce a partnership with China Mobile. Notably, iPhone 5C would be a low-priced one. And driven by those, it rose on the Nasdaq. However, after the press conference, it dropped three percent once and closed at USD 494.64, with a fall of 2.28 percent. The market value reached about USD 427 billion, compared to USD 627 billion when it launched iPhone 5.
However, people in the know disclosed in an interview later that it would sign an agreement with China Mobile on the sale of iPhones before November this year and by then, China had formally launched its first batch of 4G licenses.
An industry observer said that actually, it should seal such an agreement with China Mobile several years ago. Firstly, it was not a difficult job for it to launch TD iPhones. Secondly, its share in the Chinese market stood at 4.8 percent in the third quarter of this fiscal year, compared to nine percent a year ago. It sold 31.2 million iPhones in the quarter, but saw revenue from the Greater China region drop 14 percent from a year earlier. Thirdly, the latter saw iPhone user size hit over 30 million as at the end of last year, compared to 1.7 million ones of China Telecom Corp. Ltd. (NYSE: CHA and SEHK: 0728) and seven million ones of China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (NYSE: CHU, SEHK: 0762 and SEHK 600050). And currently, the figure was 42 million ones. It gained the users without any subsidies and provided that it provided some subsidies, the figure would rise sharply undoubtedly.
He reiterated that it was under pressure from not only archrivals including South Korean electronic giant Samsung Electronics but also leading homegrown Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi Technology Co., Ltd. And if it teamed up with China Mobile, it would recover share nibbled by the latter.
