By Star Chang, posted Nov 1, 2011 at 7:09 PM, 1,563 views,

Apple Rejects China’s Proprietary 3G Network

Look like the world’s biggest carrier will not be selling the latest iPhone 4s in Chinese market. China Mobile has failed to get Apple’s cooperation to make iPhones for its proprietary 3G network. China iPhone users can’t connect to China Mobile’s 3G network because Apple hasn’t produced a compatible version. The network system known as TD-SCDMA isn’t used outside China. The Chinese government picked China Mobile to use the proprietary network because its market dominance was supposed to help promote the technology …

Last year, China Mobile said it had met several times with Steve Jobs to discuss introducing an iPhone based on its own home-grown network standard, and those talks failed. The iPhone does conform with the standards used by China Mobile’s 2G voice and Wi-Fi data networks. Meanwhile, the company has 10 million unofficial iPhone users which are all limited to 2G data speeds. China Unicom, China Mobile’s rival, is the only carrier approved by Apple to sell iPhone product in the world’s largest mobile-phone market. China Unicom uses the international WCDMA standard as their 3G network.

China Mobile didn’t stop from signing up new iPhone users. They offers gift cards worth as much as 2,800 yuan (US$441) to their new customers, which can be spent on voice or data services by buying the iPhone 4 at partner retailers, for prepaying Wi-Fi service to surf the web. The company plans to roll out 1 million new Wi-Fi hotspots across China in the next three years. China Mobile’s subscribers with iPhones use twice as much data each month as its other smartphone subscribers, and three times the company’s average. By offering this Wi-Fi package, the company will see slow growth in earnings in the next two years.

The company is alreay developing its next-generation TD-LTE mobile network technology, and there should be commercial trials next year in China major cities. At the same time, they also received a positive answer from Apple that it would make a compatible version of iPhone for the new standard. It makes sense for Apple to introduce a LTE-compatible iPhone next year, and a launch under China Mobile would undoubtedly result in landmark sales.

Source: Bloomberg

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