China Mobile has announced that it has sold roughly 1.3 million 4G-enabled smartphones since mid-January.
The largest mobile carrier in the world said that most of these,
roughly a million, were iPhones. However, Apple might be somewhat far
from its goal of selling between 15 and 16 million iPhones in China this
year. As you might remember, China Mobile sells iPhones as a result of
the deal, signed with the Cupertino company back in December 2013.With roughly 775 million subscribers, China Mobile is Apple's perfect partner for expansion on the local market. However, the 4G network coverage across China is limited to the major cities. This might be one of the main reasons for the not-so-great sales of the Apple-branded smartphones. According to some analysts, only 12% of the iOS devices in China are Apple iPhone 5s ones, whereas the more "affordable" iPhone 5c accounts for just 2% of all Apple-branded devices in the country.
"We
added 1.34 million new 4G users in February and most of them are iPhone
users. We are happy with the progress as we are still building our 4G
network and the coverage is only available in some major cities," said Xi Gouhua, current Chairman of China Mobile.
China Mobile also announced that its overall earnings have dropped for
the first time in a decade. One of the reasons for this decline is the
increasing usage of free messaging services, such as WeChat, which are
very popular among the Chinese population.
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