China Mobile and Apple formally hold hands

Today, Apple and China Mobile jointly announced that the two sides reached a long-term agreement to officially introduce the iPhone. This means that China Mobile, which has 700 million mobile phone users, will soon launch the iPhone contract machine. This is a six-year long "love". Finally ended the show.

According to the agreement, China Mobile and Apple will officially launch the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on January 17th, 2014 in the Mobile Business Office and Apple Retail Store in Mainland China. From December 25th, 2013, users can make reservations through the China Mobile official website and the 10086 customer service hotline.

First taste of "Apple" taste September 11, Apple released a new generation of smart phone products iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Although Apple did not mention whether the two iPhones support the TD-LTE network at the press conference, the iPhone 5s and 5c of the TD-LTE standard have obtained network access licenses on August 30th. This also shows that China Mobile has no technical obstacles in introducing the iPhone.

In the following months, rumors about when China Mobile introduced the iPhone came over. Because the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not issue 4G licenses at that time, most of the rumors were centered around the issuance of 4G licenses. On December 4, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued three TD-LTE 4G licenses. The last "barrier" to China Mobile's introduction of the iPhone was eliminated.

After the licensing, foreign media rumors began to increase gradually, but the official of China Mobile has indicated that Tencent Technology has not yet reached an agreement. At the most rumored 18th, China Mobile Global Partnership Conference 2013, China Mobile Chairman Guo Guohua said in an exclusive interview with Tencent Technology that “The negotiation with Apple is still in progress and it will not announce the introduction of the iPhone today.”

According to related information sources to Tencent Technology, the delay in the announcement was mainly due to differences in the distribution of subsidies between the two sides. As we all know, Apple's mobile phone subsidies to operators have always been demanding, and these subsidies will cost operators a lot of money. For example, China Unicom and China Telecom had previously received subsidies for the introduction of the iPhone. The final outcome proves that this is merely a “loss-making” deal.

The person also revealed that the Apple company made some concessions, claiming that the lowest price in history and China Mobile signed a resale agreement, the specific number is still unknown, but China Mobile is holding 700 million users, and Apple cannot turn a blind eye. Currently, related products and contract packages are being prepared.

How much damage does the iPhone have? Still, for example, China Unicom, the first to introduce the iPhone, has shown poor performance in terms of profit indicators since the introduction of the iPhone. On the face of this, although it has a deficit, it has established a reputation for Unicom in the 3G field, bringing in 3G users and The increase in revenue from data services has driven the sales of smart phones at the level of 1,000-1,500 yuan. More importantly, China Unicom has used the iPhone to develop Suning, Gome and other social channels for the sale of mobile phones. At the same time, the iPhone also helped China Unicom steal a lot of China Mobile global users.

China Mobile in the 3G era can be said to have failed. If a star machine such as the iPhone is available in the 4G era, it can not only recover the situation, but also realize rapid change in traffic management. In addition, China Mobile will bring more users, especially high-end users. According to a previous online poll conducted by Tencent Technology, 50.25% of users said that once China Mobile introduced the iPhone, it would choose to purchase, ranking first among all options, followed by 17.83% of users choosing to purchase, followed by 10.29% respectively. Unicom Edition and 9.39% Telecom Edition.

Although China Mobile has never introduced the iPhone before, it has always provided services for iPhone users. For example, China Mobile has recently launched a Hong Kong version of the iPhone 5s/5c to upgrade its 4G services for free. After upgrading, it can experience high-speed mobile Internet access over TD-LTE 4G networks.

According to statistics, about 45 million users on the China Mobile network use other versions of the iPhone. After the official introduction, these users are expected to upgrade to the China Mobile contract version of the iPhone. The market expects that in addition to bringing more users to China Mobile, it will also help Apple to increase sales of iPhones from 20 million to 25 million.

The six-year long-running love run iPhone has been sold by more than 240 operators in more than 100 countries and regions, but China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator, was still absent.

In fact, China Mobile has long been on the iPhone. It is the first operator in China to start negotiations with Apple. Back in 2007, the iPhone went public in the United States and became popular. In November of that year, Gao Nianshu, minister of China Mobile's data department, came to Apple headquarters to negotiate the introduction of the iPhone into China.

In January 2008, China Mobile said it had suspended negotiations with Apple. But five months later, at the Apple Global Developers Conference, the then-Apple CEO stated that the 3G version of the iPhone is expected to enter the Chinese mainland within the year, but it still needs to wait for regulatory approval. According to informed sources, the turning point for the negotiations was that Apple had made concessions and no longer insisted on the income sharing model. The two sides restarted negotiations.

In 2009, China issued 3G licenses. China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing led the China Unicom Negotiation Group to negotiate with the United States. On August 28th the same year, the two parties announced that they had reached a three-year contract to sell two 3G iPhones in China and signed an exclusive distribution agreement. China Unicom Became the only authorised sales telecom operator in mainland China for two years. In the year when China Mobile began to operate its own innovative 3G TD-SCDMA system, Apple said that it would take another process to arrange for the development of TD standard, but it did indicate that it would fully support TD-LTE (4G).

In the following years, the mobile company had never given up negotiations with Apple. The two parties had not yet held hands, mainly because there were some specific clauses such as differences in income distribution.

However, Apple’s pressure on performance forced it to form an alliance with China Mobile as soon as possible. In recent years, Apple's market share in China has been no small challenge. In the third quarter of this year, Apple’s Greater China sales decreased by 14% year-on-year to only US$4.6 billion. According to market research firm Canalys, this quarter, Apple’s share of the Chinese smartphone market fell to 5%, ranking seventh. Samsung leads by 18%.

In the long run, Apple may cooperate with China Mobile to reverse its decline in China. Some agencies predict that the cooperation with China Mobile will bring 759 million potential new customers to Apple, which will cause the company to surge 17 million new customers and generate at least $3 billion in revenue.

4G is also a major factor in promoting the cooperation between Apple and China Mobile. With the official issuance of 4G licenses, the cooperation between the two parties may bring about a better experience for users in the 4G era, thus achieving a win-win situation. In other words, 4G is a big business opportunity for China Mobile and Apple.

After their own troubles in the honeymoon, Mobile currently has not announced plans to purchase the iPhone, but outsiders speculated that its basic model and Telecom, China Unicom will be "the same destination." In the years following the cooperation between Telecom and China Unicom and Apple, the market penetration rate of the iPhone has greatly increased and it is even approaching saturation in the high-end market. This means that China Mobile needs to spend more on low-end consumers, and the cost-effectiveness of the contract machine needs to be more forceful.

What needs to be pointed out is tariff and coverage. It is reported that China Mobile's initial plan is to provide 600M/50 yuan, 1G/70 yuan, 2G/100 yuan, 3G/130 yuan, 5G/180 yuan data package services. However, some users believe that at 100Mbps network speed, these traffic will be used quickly. Even at the actual rate, such traffic is obviously not enough, plus the high tariff will inevitably affect the iPhone user experience. In terms of coverage, even though the 4G network starts quickly, network optimization also takes a long time. China Mobile also started to run fast on 3G networks. However, due to the quality of the network, users have lost a lot.

Secondly, 2014 should be a heavy year for China Mobile. The goal of China Mobile is to build the world's largest 4G network. Currently, it is accelerating the deployment of networks. The construction of base stations will exceed 500,000 next year, and 100 cities are expected to be available in the middle of the year. 4G commercial conditions will expand to more than 340 cities by the end of next year. In addition, in order to popularize 4G and subsidize thousands of mobile phone companies, the potential danger of China Mobile’s profit reduction in balancing purchase subsidies and network construction investment will be faced in the future. The biggest problem.

For Apple, after the agreement is reached, there will be an initial surge in iPhone sales, but rapid growth is short-lived. In the long run, operator subsidy is not the decisive factor in the final win of the iPhone. Apple still has to compete fiercely with Samsung and other mobile phone companies. Domestic mobile phones represented by China UFK and Xiaomi have also emerged, especially in the first quarter of next year, when the domestic brand of a thousand yuan 4G mobile phone is available, these products will affect Apple's mobile phone sales more or less.

In addition, the smart phone market in China is becoming saturated. The cost of domestic smart phones is much lower than that of foreign products, which is very attractive to people in second and third-tier cities. According to statistics from Analysys International, in the third quarter, more than 88% of Chinese consumers spent less than 3,000 US dollars when purchasing smart phones, while Apple’s iPhone 5s had a price of more than 5,000 yuan in China and 5c had a price of more than 4,500 yuan.

But in any case, for the mobile users, the long-awaited boots finally landed, and then move on the move.