Selling out in depot across China , the iPhone 4 has not only been a success for Apple , but has also commit peregrine provider China Unicom an bound by helping it sign up more users to its 3 gram next contemporaries mobile services .
Last workweek , China Unicom report a total of 10 million 3 gibibyte exploiter , just one class after the party launch the newfangled mobile serving . At the same time , it report selling 100,000 iPhone 4s less than a week after the product was launch in China on Sept. 25 .
Credit for the company ’s continued ontogenesis with its 3 GiB user will partially be due to sales of the iPhone , analysts say . “ The iPhone has had a significant purpose , and now that they ’ve landed the iPhone 4 , it will have an even more significant role , ” articulate Mark Natkin , managing managing director of Bejing - base Marbridge Consulting .
Currently , China Unicom is the only mobile supplier for the iPhone in the country . In developing its 3 G networks , the company has adopted the WCDMA ( Wideband Code Division Multiple Access ) criterion , which is widely used outside of China .
Analysts note this has made it easier for major cellphone shaper like Apple to convey their machine to China Unicom , so the company can bid a stronger natural selection of smartphones . In the company ’s last interim write up for the end of June , China Unicom aver that 91 percentage of its 3 G users follow from mobile handset purchases .
China Mobile was the first mobile supplier to launch its 3 G service in China , making it available in January 2009 . But it did so using the homegrown TD - SCDMA ( Time Division Synchronous CDMA ) 3 G banner , a unexampled technology not used outside of the country . As a outcome , cellular telephone Divine must modify their existing handsets with this measure in ordering to access China Mobile ’s 3 G web . Analysts say this has result to a weaker extract of smartphones offered through the ship’s company .
“ So despite the weaker selling mightiness and image of China Unicom , it is proportionately doing a much better caper with 3 G than China Mobile , which should have about triple the number of China Unicom ’s users , not just 40 percent more , ” he said .
Despite its popularity , the iPhone 4 will not achieve a major market share in the country , Joffe added . Before the iPhone 4 officially went on sales agreement in China , Apple had only a 7.1 percent parcel of the Formosan smartphone market , according to Beijing - ground research business firm Analysys International .
But analysts say the iPhone has made more Taiwanese users consider buying a smartphone and signing up with a 3 gee internet .
“ We are getting more people willing to make the leap . They will grease one’s palms the smartphone , then they will get the 3 gram , ” enjoin David Wolf , CEO of Wolf Group Asia , a Beijing - free-base engineering consultancy . “ The iPhone has been getting hoi polloi cognisant of what that 3 thou substance abuser experience can be like . ”
