Apple Inc is on the verge of clinching agreements with two of the biggest holdouts to selling its iPhone, China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) and NTT DoCoMo Inc, opening a route to hundreds of millions of new customers.
Ahead of an event on Sept. 10 to unveil new iPhones, Apple and China Mobile are near a deal for the world’s largest wireless carrier to offer the device, said a source, who asked not to be identified citing privacy concerns.
Apple is also close to an agreement to distribute its handset through Japan’s largest mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo, sources have said.
Photo: EPA
Any final deals will bust loose at least 800 million new consumers for the iPhone, with China Mobile boasting 740 million subscribers and NTT DoCoMo about 62 million, data released by the carriers show. Those would be welcome customers for Apple, which is combating slowing sales growth for its flagship product amid competition from Samsung Electronics Co and makers of cheaper handsets.
“This is a very big deal for Apple,” said Brian Marshall, an analyst with ISI Group in San Francisco. “Apple’s iPhone growth has really slowed down.”
The agreements would end years of negotiations where the carriers balked at Apple’s terms, including the costs of subsidies needed to make the iPhone affordable for customers. Apple is set to reveal a lower-cost iPhone on Sept. 10, a source said.
Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Apple in Cupertino, California, declined to comment on China Mobile on Friday. Zhang Xuan (張軒), a Beijing-based spokesman for China Mobile’s parent company China Mobile Communications, did not answer calls.
“We’re not the source of information and nothing has been decided at this point,” DoCOMo said on Friday.
While Apple is preparing to a ship a lower-cost iPhone to China Mobile, a deal will not be announced at Apple’s Sept. 10 event, or at a follow-up event in Beijing on Sept. 11, a source said. It is unclear if a DoCoMo agreement will be announced on Sept. 10.
China is one of Apple’s largest markets, yet sales there fell 14 percent last quarter as new local smartphone vendors like ZTE Corp (中興) and Xiaomi Corp (小米) took market share by offering lower-cost alternatives to the iPhone.
China is playing an increasingly important role in the global smartphone market, with sales there exceeding combined US and Western Europe sales, said Linda Sui, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.
In the December quarter, China Mobile may order 5 million iPhones, then 40 million more next year, according to Marshall.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of US Affordable Care Act enrollees expired on Jan.1, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day US government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their political aspirations this year. US President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A US House of Representatives vote
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS