Apple Will Strike iPhone Deal In China Three Months Earlier Than Expected, Says Analyst
The Chinese government received an application from Apple today, seeking a Network Access License to sell the iPhone for officially-sanctioned use in the country. So says Wedge Partners, a Colorado-based stock research firm.
Maybe more surprising is that the application is for an iPhone that doesn’t include wifi connectivity. This has been a sticking point in negotiations with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which wants the phone to only run on the cellular networks. “Apple was hellbent on having the iPhone be wifi-enabled,” says Wedge analyst Matt Mathison. “The Chinese government has been just as adament that it not be.”
This removes one more obstacle towards getting official clearance to sell iPhones in China—beyond the million or more people who are using unlocked versions of the phone brought into the country from elsewhere. Now, that official launch may come three months or so earlier than expected, says Mathison. He says it typically takes four to six months for such an application to be accepted. And he believes the approved license will accelerate talks with China Unicom, one of the three big state-controlled carriers in China. As such, “we now expect it to come before the Spring Festival in [January] 2010.”
Wedge believes the iPhone outlined in the application runs on the GSM standard, like all other iPhones, and is not a new model that runs on the CDMA standard used by huge Chinese carriers such as China Telecom. That jives with what Apple has said in the past, despite talk of it doing a deal with Verizon, another huge CDMA-based carrier. Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook told stock analysts in April that CDMA “doesn’t rerally have a life to it after a point in time,” since it would be largely replaced by the LTE standard within a few years.
Apple did not comment on Wedge’s report, except to note that Cook said during that April earnings call that the company “would like to be in China within the next year (i.e. anytime within the next 12 months) and we’re clearly working on that.”
If Wedge’s timetable proves to be accurate, it will be another case of Apple under-promising and over-delivering—by about three months.
source
Maybe more surprising is that the application is for an iPhone that doesn’t include wifi connectivity. This has been a sticking point in negotiations with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which wants the phone to only run on the cellular networks. “Apple was hellbent on having the iPhone be wifi-enabled,” says Wedge analyst Matt Mathison. “The Chinese government has been just as adament that it not be.”
This removes one more obstacle towards getting official clearance to sell iPhones in China—beyond the million or more people who are using unlocked versions of the phone brought into the country from elsewhere. Now, that official launch may come three months or so earlier than expected, says Mathison. He says it typically takes four to six months for such an application to be accepted. And he believes the approved license will accelerate talks with China Unicom, one of the three big state-controlled carriers in China. As such, “we now expect it to come before the Spring Festival in [January] 2010.”
Wedge believes the iPhone outlined in the application runs on the GSM standard, like all other iPhones, and is not a new model that runs on the CDMA standard used by huge Chinese carriers such as China Telecom. That jives with what Apple has said in the past, despite talk of it doing a deal with Verizon, another huge CDMA-based carrier. Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook told stock analysts in April that CDMA “doesn’t rerally have a life to it after a point in time,” since it would be largely replaced by the LTE standard within a few years.
Apple did not comment on Wedge’s report, except to note that Cook said during that April earnings call that the company “would like to be in China within the next year (i.e. anytime within the next 12 months) and we’re clearly working on that.”
If Wedge’s timetable proves to be accurate, it will be another case of Apple under-promising and over-delivering—by about three months.
source
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