The availability of a subsidized iPhone on China Mobile’s network will be a huge opportunity for Apple to gain a strong foothold in the Chinese market.
The company has offered a number of plans, each of which is priced about 100 yuan less than comparable ones offered by rival China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU), the only other Chinese carrier with an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) tie up, which began selling the 4S in January.
We don’t expect Apple to replace Samsung any time soon, Gartner analyst Sandy Shen said.
Apples smartphone market share in the country currently sits at 7.5% compared to Samsungs commanding 24.3%.
Sometimes, though, one can use primary research to estimate the total market size and a company’s market share.
The 16.8 point gap between the two companies has nearly doubled since the third quarter, though Apple is still the top smartphone vendor globally by volume.
Cell phone makers shipped 10.65 million units in the three month period, up 15.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010, with smartphones making up 64.7 percent of those shipments.
Unlike Samsung’s strategy ofpartnering with all carriers, Apple has limited its own successby not making a device compatible with the nation’s biggestoperator, China Mobile Ltd (941).
Oliver Ilie is a business journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Oliver has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Oliver spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
