Results tagged “unicom”

On your marks! Get set! Whoooa.. So close yet so far. The eager beavers at Reuters got us all excited earlier today reporting that China Unicom had finally inked the deal to bring the iPhone to China. They went so far as to report that the device would cost Unicom RMB3,000 per phone, a price they will hopefully pass on to the consumer which would make it RMB1,000 cheaper than the smuggled US models sold at Metro City.

The words "unconfirmed", "anonymous" and "sketchy" all come to mind whenever we talk about the arrival of the iPhone to China, but this latest story actually originates from Foxconn, the contract manufacturer for Apple's game-changing phone. JLM Pacific Epoch reports that an unnamed source within the company has leaked that they have already commenced mass production of wifi-less versions of the iPhone for release in this country.

As "G-Day" approaches and suburban Beijing start to get their 3G signal, we are still speculating about the arrival of the iPhone. Rather than relying on official announcements, pundits are now looking further up the iPhone supply chain to make predictions about how and who will bring the iPhone to China.

With major companies all hoping to attract China's massive customer base, especially the burgeoning middle class, the Chinese next-gen phone market is getting a bit crowded all of a sudden.

While the system seems pretty cool, we feel like we've definitely seen that OS somewhere else.

Apparently tmcnet.com reports an announcement last Wednesday that suggests that Unicom will officially be selling the iPhone in China in May to co-inside with the launch of their 3G service. This is welcome news after all the rumors and innuendo that have been going around. Strange thing is, the iPhone page that appeared on the China Unicom website seems to have been taken down. (to look at a screenshot of the page click here). So until we see more news on this, we're not holding our breath.

Even with China Unicom basically confirming that they are absolutely talking with Apple, the future of the iPhone in China is still anyone's guess. That's because the company from Cupertino has two choices for who it should throw its precious little moneymaker into.

• Last week Baidu announced after two years of searching the appointment of Li Yinan as the new Chief Technology Officer for China's leading search engine. Just when everything began to fall into place and we were getting ready for a season Googlesque innovation, rumours began to fly that William I. Chang, Baidu's Chief Scientific Officer was planning to resign because he didn't like his new job scope. Not sure though how much of a rumour it is when they have already named his successor.
• To make CEO Robin Li's life even more stressful, Baidu's next big push will be into the e-commerce arena with the launch of youa.com may be thwarted by Alibaba Group's announcement that it will invest another RMB5 billion into its own online Taobao.com to strengthen its 57% market share. Of course Alibaba claims that this had nothing to do with fending off Baidu and we of course believe them.
• In its own corporate reshuffle, Alibaba has for the first time in its five year history appointed a COO. Zhang Yong, former CFO was promoted to fill the void left by Huang Ruo, the former VP and B2C business director who resigned at the end of September.