Over the last few days, rumors have swirled about an iPhone contract with China Mobile or another major Chinese carrier. Here’s one example of these blogged rumors, from intoMobile. Here’s a breathless article from IDG.
All of these rumors has affected Apple and China Mobile stock prices, of course. The iPhonemakes a lot of sense in Asian market because the phone has no hardware keyboard. It seems easy to support specific languages with the on-screen keyboard.
According to ZDNet, a Chinese iPhone deal won’t happen any time soon, even though China Mobile has 350 million customers.
Stick to the business model
Apple wants a piece of the voice and data revenue, iTunes Store support, and locked SIM cards in the phones. But China Mobile does not want a revenue partner, the iTunes store is not popular in China, and CM’s phones use unlocked SIM cards. It’s always interesting when the key success factors do not come together.
China Unicom doesn’t support GSM, so they’re out of the picture. The iPhone is a GSM device, partly because AT&T wanted the exclusive US contract, but mostly because the European mobile carriers use GSM.
iPhones are made in China
Google’s Android platform may be more Chinese carriers, especially if Chinese device manufacturers and the Chinese government support the platform.
Yahoo’s recent problems in the US Congress are a good lesson for Apple and Google. The Chinese government will go to great lengths to monitor and control the Internet in their country, but that government needs willing partners to get the work done. Here’s a good discussion of Chinese monitoring practices in Wired.
Tags: at&t, China, Europe, Google, government, GSM, Internet, key-success-factors, ksf, mobile, monitoring, privacy, security, usability
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