Apple's iPhone Deal With China Unicom Not Exclusive

[MacRumors]

Dow Jones Newswires reports that Apple's deal with Chinese wireless provider China Unicom to bring the iPhone to that country, announced last week, is in fact not exclusive. Early reports had claimed that the deal contained a multi-year exclusivity arrangement for China Unicom, but the official denial by Apple opens the door to the company allowing other Chinese wireless providers to offer the iPhone.

"I can confirm it is not an exclusive deal," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said in an e-mailed statement.

She declined, however, to say which other companies Apple is in talks with.

The report notes that China Mobile remains interested in carrying the iPhone, despite lengthy previous negotiations with Apple that faced numerous stumbling blocks and allowed China Unicom to become the first to launch the iPhone in China.

Article Link: Apple's iPhone Deal With China Unicom Not Exclusive

 

[Rocketman]

Unlike the rest of the world, when you negotiate with China Telecom, you have China the government, at the table. China's demands superceed the needs and desires of the other parties CT and AAPL.

That makes any outcome at all very difficult, and one that is beneficial to CT, AAPL and consumers nearly impossible. This will be a crippled device offering more services than other handset providers, but not the full feature set the providers are willing and able to provide.

I guess here it is a little like ATT banning tethering, VoIP, and video resend services to manage bandwidth. Except in this case China is making sure all traffic is visible to them and there are no easy ways to prevent that.

Haven't they heard of Echelon?



Rocketman

 

[iphones4evry1]

Competition!

Wow, looks like Chinese consumers are going to have it better than us when it comes to choice. Who would have ever thought that. I hope the FCC sees just exactly what it is allowing the evil at&t to get away with.

Note to Steve Jobs: End the at&t exclusivity already!
Note to the FCC: It is obvious that at&t is stifling consumer choice. End the exclusivity!

 

[Rocketman]

Competition!

Wow, looks like Chinese consumers are going to have it better than us when it comes to choice. Who would have ever thought that. I hope the FCC sees just exactly what it is allowing the evil at&t to get away with.

Note to Steve Jobs: End the at&t exclusivity already!
Note to the FCC: It is obvious that at&t is stifling consumer choice. End the exclusivity!

Be careful who you blame. There are two signatories to that exclusivity contract.

Rocketman

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

China's crippled iPhone has everything except for Wi-Fi, which is not that big of a deal. Most people in China use pay-as-you-go and not contracts. The rates are cheap and most of the internet related tasks on the iPhone require little bandwidth. Mobile providers want to earn money from people using 3G (which is far more efficient that most countries and extremely speedy) rather than Wi-Fi, it's understandable.

However, here in the States, we are being f***ed and screwed over by AT&T for MMS. They promised late summer and still we haven't gotten squat. That is definitely NOT understandable, their shoddy 3G coverage and deaf ears to the customers.

 

[SFStateStudent]

Apple doesn't care which company they go with as a service provider in China; all Apple wants to know is "where do I send the 5,000,000 iPhones to and when?"

 

[abbeybrooke01]

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[nonamelive]

China's crippled iPhone has everything except for Wi-Fi, which is not that big of a deal. Most people in China use pay-as-you-go and not contracts. The rates are cheap and most of the internet related tasks on the iPhone require little bandwidth. Mobile providers want to earn money from people using 3G (which is far more efficient that most countries and extremely speedy) rather than Wi-Fi, it's understandable.

However, here in the States, we are being f***ed and screwed over by AT&T for MMS. They promised late summer and still we haven't gotten squat. That is definitely NOT understandable, their shoddy 3G coverage and deaf ears to the customers.

If the iPhone doesn't have Wi-Fi, many apps in the app store will be useless, such as Remote, GoodReader, AirSharing, etc...

 

[pengpai]

it has been proved that the iphones sold in china have no wifi.

 

[alphaod]

If the iPhone doesn't have Wi-Fi, many apps in the app store will be useless, such as Remote, GoodReader, AirSharing, etc...

As if 99% of the apps in the app store are of any use to the average Chinese consumer.