10:00 AM -Recently, Apple and world’s largest carrier China Mobile finally signed an agreement that would bring the iPhone 5s and 5c to over 700 million subscribers. Recent report has shown us that subscriber growth in China has sharply gone down in the recent months. This is before the deal between China Mobile and Apple. Other companies have so far failed to impress customers in buying new phones, however that may soon change.
In September 2013, 17 million 3G subscriptions were activated in China. In October, the 17 million figure went down to 13.4 million and continued to struggle with 11 million in November. In China, 3G subscriptions make up for a good portion of smartphone contracts. On the contrary, 2G subscribers still use featured phones on the network of their choice.
Since September 2013, Apple started selling the iPhone on the country’s smaller carriers China Unicom and China Telecom. While we have seen a slow down over couple of months, we see China Mobile’s offering of the iPhone as a big potential for not only Apple, but the smartphone market right now. The iPhone has become available for pre-order to more than 700 million subscribers, it’s safe to say that the iPhone’s market share is set to grow in 2014.
Another reason why customers may not be upgrading as much is due to the roll out of TD-LTE network. China Mobile has begun to roll out their next generation of TD-LTE network. This comes as a perfect timing sinces the iPhone just launched, so interested customers will begin to upgrade to iPhone and take advantage of faster data speeds.
While the timing is set for Apple and the iPhone, this could spell trouble for companies such as Samsung, LG and HTC. The companies have failed to appeal their smartphones to customers, and as such, may suffer some market share loss to Apple.
What do you think?
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