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China Mobile and Apple Bring iPhone to China Mobile’s 4G & 3G Networks
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoHere's the most important sentence: China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile services provider by network scale and subscriber base, serving over 760 million customers. The NYT has some more context, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/technology/apple-and-china-mobile-sign-iphone-deal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/technology/apple-and-china...
- est 13y ago... and like 80% of its subscribers are GPRS or EDGE users.
- capkutay 13y agoIf that's true, the remaining 20% is about as large as half the US population.
- est 13y agoFor the remaining 3G users, 80% are likely TD-SCDMA disguised as land line telephones. It's a Chinese thing, where you pay for a "fixed line" telephone set, but no need for actual wires to your home. Communication were done via wireless TD-SCDMA.
- ttflee 13y ago> via wireless TD-SCDMA. Or EDGE. Actually there are two or three such phones in my office.
- beachstartup 13y agoso, in other words, the world's largest 4G expansion opportunity?
- est 13y agoWell, Chinese policy requires TDD-LTE devices to be compatible with TD-SCDMA.
- userbinator 13y agoThe majority also use unbranded/local/clone Android handsets (including ones that look like iPhones).
- rebel 13y agoI wonder if this was timed precisely so they could meet demand in the rest of the world for Christmas. With that rush obviously ending on Christmas day, they start taking orders for China Mobile on that day.
- yabatopia 13y agoOr maybe it has more to do with Chinese New Year then with Western holidays.
- rebel 13y agoQuite possible. I am not well versed in Chinese holidays, but from an American perspective the timing implies they wanted to meet Christmas demand before adding in such a large market. Thanks for your perspective though, I guess I have a little learning to do.
- newhouseb 13y agoChristmas has been adopted in China as one of the country's largest retail holidays (obviously with no religious affiliation), so I'm sure demand for the iPhone is very strong during Christmas in China as well. It seems likely that the timing is designed around CNY but w/ the new Chinese consumerism, demand is likely very strong throughout the year.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoThis is clearly timed for CNY, like the iPhone 4 release was. January is China's largest retail season as there is a lot of gift buying for the early February golden week when everyone goes back to see their family. But go to the Apple store any night and its extremely crowded. Its like IKEA but a lot more packed since the space is much smaller.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoMobile phone numbers cannot be ported from one mobile network in China to another.* Therefore, people are extremely reluctant to switch networks. Otherwise Apple fans would have all switched to China Unicom long ago. Several of my friends use iPhones on China Mobile. They don't get 3G data speeds because China Mobile uses a different 3G standard, supported only by specific handsets. There are lots of Android-based choices. * except for some very limited trials, none of which have been in tier 1 cities AFAIK
- rebel 13y agoWill the iPhone 5s's currently on China Mobile be able to utilize the new high speeds once this occurs, or will they need a new special China Mobile iPhone to use the 3g/4g? If that were the case I would expect a large portion of people who already have iPhones to be upgrading very early.
- Aloha 13y agoYou would likely need a phone that supports TD-SCDMA - which I dont think the iPhone has done.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoCorrect.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoSee huetsch's comment below. If you only want 2G and 4G (but not 3G), then there's already a 5s that works with China Mobile. Can anyone here share their real-life experience of China Mobile's 4G coverage in Beijing?
- huetsch 13y agoThe A1530 actually falls back to 3G and then 2G depending on the part of Beijing. I don't really understand how that works, but the 3G is also much better than the 2G, which is pretty awful. One very painful thing about the A1530 is that the 4G connection gets broken (and thrown back to 3G or 2G, depending on location) whenever a call comes in or you make a call out. You then have to manually reconnect to the 4G network. I don't really understand why this is. Maybe the voice data is being sent over the 4G network during a call or something? The China Mobile people told me explicitly about the problem. 4G has only been available since the 18th, so haven't had that much time with it, but coverage seems decent.
- yalogin 13y agoWonder what the structure of that deal is? China mobile held out this long so they wanted something or we're not willing to give up what Apple asked for.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoOr vice versa. Unicom was killing China Mobile at the high end since it had iPhone and China mobile didn't. Even China Telecom had iPhone for crying out loud!
- nthitz 13y agoCould this announcement have had any influence on the allegations about evasi0n's decision to "rush their jailbreak" or however you read that drama https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951647
- objclxt 13y agoSeems unlikely, given it's been brewing for months (years?). China Mobile had already started selling iPhones a few weeks ago, with in store displays. Far more likely that someone was about to leak the jailbreak without the stuff they were (allegedly) paid to add, which would completely devalue/derail their own deal.
- ngsandy1618 13y agoMaybe chinese new year coming soon. Its a sort of promotion or something
- marme 13y agoOne tiny problem with this is that there is no 4G service is currently available in china. China mobile also does not run a standard 3G network they run a proprietary 3G network standard that only chinese phones made for their network can run on, it looks like the 4G is going to be proprietary also, 4G/TD-LTE and 3G/TD-SCDMA. I dont know how they are going to be ready to have 3G and 4G ready for the iphone by the end of this year. So this means those iphones to be sold by china mobile will be using the proprietary 3g and 4g standard that cant be used outside of china. Many customers who travel will be very upset when they realize their iphone data network wont work outside of china
- mindjiver 13y agoBoth TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE are standardised by 3GPP, just like WCDMA and FD-LTE. So they are not proprietary standards.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoTD-SCDMA are incredibly unstable technologies, or China mobile has implemented them poorly; I'll take 3G on China Unicom anyday over CMCC's 3G. The problem with these home grown "standards" is that no one else uses them and they never get the international support they need to become stable.
- javindo 13y agoSlightly off topic but this line made me chuckle: iPhone 5s, the most forward-thinking smartphone in the world and iPhone 5c, the most colorful iPhone yet I guess that's a PR problem you have to deal with when you release the best of your efforts alongside a lower cost version!
- iribe 13y ago...and any apps that government doesn't like will be cens^h^h^h^hbanned.