China Mobile eyes iPad sales on mainland
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China Mobile is keen to sell Apple's iPad on the Chinese mainland as it is expected to boost the country's dominant telco's revenue when users download rich data services such as mobile reading, its chairman said yesterday.
The telco, the world's biggest, is also interested to sell the iPhone that uses China's own 3G technology, said Chairman Wang Jianzhou.
China Mobile wants to sell the iPad tablet computer, which debuted last month in the United States, on the mainland and it was also talking with Apple about developing a 3G iPhone model that operates on the TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access), a home-grown 3G mobile standard, Wang said at the company's annual shareholders meeting yesterday.
Apple China declined to comment yesterday.
Apple announced last week that it would sell its iPad in Hong Kong in July but it didn't reveal details of its sale on the mainland.
The tablet computer, with a 9.7-inch screen, Wi-Fi, word processing feature and mobile book software, has been warmly received by the market. It's estimated that Apple will ship 13 million iPads globally by the end of 2011, according to Ovum, a UK-based IT consulting firm.
The iPad, with its strong e-book and game features, is likely to help China Mobile boost revenue and gain a bigger share in the mainland's 3G market. The iPad comes with either Wi-Fi and 3G or just with Wi-Fi.
Telcos on the mainland are boosting mobile data services as income from traditional voice business falls.
China Mobile's monthly ARPU (average revenue per user), a key index to measure a telco's profitability, fell 12 percent from a year ago in March to 70 yuan (US$10.3). It aims to boost ARPU via new services, such as mobile payment, video and reading, to compete with China Unicom, which tied up with Apple to launch the iPhone in October on the mainland.
