Apple not near a deal with China Mobile, home-made 4G/3G network still not compatible

Some analysts had predicted before that China Mobile might be closing a deal with Apple on the sale of the new iPhone 5. The speculation was based on the rumour that both companies are working on the bugs that come with 4G LTE chip in the iPhone and the home-cooked TD LTE. However, there has been no confirmation on the news.

“Contrary to some media reports’ suggestions, the initial version of iPhone 5 does not work on TD-LTE technology (4G technology adopted by China Mobile),” Nomura analyst Danny Chu wrote.

“As the new iPhone is not compatible with China Mobile’s 3G (TD-SCDMA) or 4G (TD-LTE) technologies, it can only operate on 2G networks of China Mobile,” he said. “Until Apple launches an iPhone that is compatible with TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE, we continue to believe China Mobile is reluctant to commit to an iPhone partnership agreement.”

The new iPhone works on the advance wireless technology 4G LTE, first time on an iPhone, and also is compatible with 3.5G HSPA+ and 3G HSPA and EV DO. However, none of them are home at China Mobile.

Being the world’s biggest cellular wireless carrier in terms of subscribers, China Mobile is the untapped market for Apple that might take the sales of the handsets in excess of hundreds of millions if not billions.

Apple iPhones are taken to be a luxury products in China for the reason that only China Unicom and China Telecom sell the subsidized products. However, still the services are quite expensive for Chinese market. Both companies also do not have deeper reach in the Chinese market.

There is an opinion among analysts that if Apple strikes a deal with China Mobile, only the top 4 percent subscribers would mean an additional sale of multi-million phones.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=32766

Posted by Usman Khalid on Sep 17 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.