The Apple rumor mill will not be silenced by the mere appearance of an actual announcement on the next step for the hot-selling Apple iPhone in the states.
Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White writes Monday “in the past, we have indicated that we believe China Telecom is likely to carry the iPhone shortly after a deal is struck with Verizon. With 88 million wireless subscribers on its CDMA network, China Telecom is nearly the size of Verizon.”
China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. is currently only network operator in China to offer the iPhone, The Wall Street Journal’s Owen Fletcher reported back in September. The iPhone 4 went on sale in China about three months after its introduction in the U.S. and several other countries in late June. That compares with a lag of 28 months between the original iPhone’s U.S. introduction and the first authorized iPhone sales in China.
Apple was China’s fifth-largest smartphone vendor in the third quarter with a 5.9% share of unit sales, but the iPhone 4 is likely to boost its fourth-quarter sales, said Beijing research firm Analysys International. Nokia Corp. had the largest share of China’s smartphone market in the third quarter at 23.5%, according to Analysys, The Journal reports.
As The Journal’s Loretta Chao reported back in June, China’s three state-owned mobile operators, China Mobile Ltd., China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. and China Telecom Corp., are beginning to gain 3G subscribers after a long regulatory delay. According to government statistics, China as of April 2010 had 786.5 million mobile subscribers, the most in the world.
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