It's official: China Mobile will sell the iPhone, bringing Apple roughly 760 million opportunities to boost both its market share and iPhone revenues. That's roughly how many subscribers China Mobile has: Nearly three-quarters of a billion. Surely, Apple will only capture a percentage of that total but even a reasonable 10 percent would total a whopping 76 million iPhones. Putting that in perspective: Apple sold a total of 33.8 million iPhones last quarter on all carriers combined.
The iPhone officially launches on China Mobile on January 17, 2014, but starting on December 25, customers can pre-register for the either the iPhone 5c or iPhone 5s. As we suspected, this deal requires a completely different model for either phone because no currently available iPhone supports China Mobile's TD-SCDMA 3G network. Apple says the new handset will work on that network as well as China Mobile's new 4G TD-LTE service.
Having the iPhone available ought to be a big boon for China Mobile which is in the midst of the largest LTE network rollout in the world. Per Apple's news release:
China Mobile now has over 1.2 million 2G/GSM, 3G/TD-SCDMA, 4G/TD-LTE base stations and over 4.2 million Wi-Fi access points, providing broad coverage to quality networks for iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c customers. China Mobile is rolling out the world's largest 4G network. By the end of 2013, China Mobile's 4G services will be available in 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. By the end of 2014, China Mobile plans to complete the rollout of more than 500,000 4G base stations, which will cover more than 340 cities with 4G service.
The best way for a carrier to recoup the billions of capital for such an infrastructure project is to get as many people on it as quickly as possible and on a device that has a high level of customer usage on network. I won't hazard a guess as to actual iPhone sales for China Mobile, but I can't think of a better phone to get in people's hands to take advantage of the new network.
Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- How to deliver the next-generation web experience
- 4G: State of the Union
- How new devices, networks, and consumer habits will change the web experience
沒有留言:
發佈留言