SHANGHAI: Apple’s iPhone will soon officially go on sale in China, more than two years after its US debut, but it may not make much of a splash, with smuggled units and similar devices available, analysts say.

China Unicom late last month announced a multi-year deal to sell the trendy smartphone in the world’s largest mobile market of more than 700 million subscribers, starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Unicom beat China Mobile to the punch, putting an end to years of on-off negotiations between the US high-tech giant and the world’s biggest cell phone operator, but experts… Read the rest

Apple has confirmed that its agreement to sell iPhones via China Unicom, which lasts for three years, isn’t exclusive. China Mobile says it is still in talks with Apple to carry the iPhone, though Apple hasn’t said what Chinese carriers it is in talks with. And while that company—China’s largest mobile carrier by a wide margin—cited control issues with how the App Store is run, there may be further legal hurdles to cross before Apple can offer apps via the App Store to Chinese users.

China Unicom may have sealed the deal first, but it likely won’t be… Read the rest

As China Mobile’s 3G terminals main push OPhone,

OPhone launch marked China Mobile’s own mobile phone operating system developed by OMS from behind the scenes into the formal front, and will be the mainstream of the international cell phone operating system.

This afternoon in beijing time, China Mobile will hold a press conference in Beijing, officially launched Android-based systems Ophone. Since the previous Mobile and Apple negotiations broke down, which claimed that the development OMS mobile phone Ophone. After a delay of… Read the rest

China Mobile may be the world’s largest carrier, but it is having a hard time sourcing handsets for its 3G network, which uses a specialized homegrown technology as mandated by the government. Today, it signed a deal with Taiwan-based HTC, which will launch at least one model in China this year and at least five in 2010, Reuters reports.

For handset makers, it’s got to be a tough decision: On the downside, they’ll have to support TD-SCDMA, a technology no other carrier in the world uses, but on the plus side, you’ll be selling devices via China… Read the rest

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier, aims to sign a series of deals with key Taiwanese firms this week, helping them gain access into China’s rapidly growing telecoms market.

They include an agreement with smartphone maker HTC to launch at least one model in China this year — to be called the “Ophone” — and at least five models in 2010, China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou told reporters at a news conference.

“We’re working with HTC to jointly develop smartphones based on our TD-SCDMA technology,” Wang said, referring to the company’s homegrown 3G standard. “We’ll see at least… Read the rest