China Mobile Ltd. will start selling Apple’s iPhone 5C and 5S beginning January 17.
After six years of seemingly unending business talks between Apple Inc. and China Mobile, they have finally met halfway and signed the deal that would give both of them a way to reverse declining shares in the country with 1.2 billion wireless network subscribers.
In less than a month, Apple’s high-end iPhone 5S and low-cost iPhone 5C handsets will be marketed by China Mobile and in Apple’s retail stores in China as well, under the multiyear agreement. However, spokesperson for the two companies didn’t provide financial terms for the mobile phones.
The agreement gives the tech giant access to all network carriers in the world’s biggest handset market, where smartphones running on Android, like South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.’s phones, sells the most.
Furthermore, the deal may help the leading network carrier in China attract high-end subscribers to its latest 4G network despite the fact that it faces its first profit decline in over 10 years.
Bryan Wang, principal analyst and country manager in China for Forrester Research, told Bloomberg on Sunday, “The China Mobile deal will significantly help Apple’s position in China. China Mobile will use the iPhone to win back some high-end subscribers who chose to defect to other carriers because of the iPhone.”
According to a statement by Apple, pre-registration for China Mobile’s latest plans, which will be announced at a later date, will begin on Christmas Day.
“iPhone still matters a lot for high-end customers,” Tucker Grinnan, a Hong Kong-based analyst at HSBC Holdings Plc, said by phone before the announcement. “One of the main reasons China Mobile is in the position that it is today, in terms of growing revenue at a much slower pace than its competitors, is because they have been waiting for an iPhone deal.”
