China Mobile Could Take 3G Lead With iPhone

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (Trefis) -- China's largest wireless service provider, China Mobile (CHL), said last week that it added close to 6 million subscribers in January, taking its total tally past 650 million. The company now has more than 655 million mobile subscribers, of which about 54 million subscribe to its 3G services. While the carrier is well ahead of China Unicom (CHU) and China Telecom (CHA) in terms of overall subscriber numbers, it doesn't enjoy the same dominance in the high growth but still young 3G market. Could the arrival of the iPhone 4S on China Mobile's network change that?

See our complete analysis of China Mobile here.

At less than 14%, 3G penetration in China is very low. This gives smaller wireless carriers such as China Unicom and China Telecom ample opportunity to compete with the behemoth that is China Mobile. With more than 650 million subscribers, China Mobile is the largest wireless carrier in the world and has twice as many overall subscribers as China Unicom. But when it comes to 3G, the difference is not nearly as much. As of January, China Mobile had around 54 million 3G subscribers to around 43 million subscribed to China Unicom's 3G network and close to 39 million on China Telecom's 3G network.

Moreover, China Unicom has been closing the gap with China Mobile by adding a growing number of 3G subscribers every month. January saw China Mobile add 2.7 million 3G subscribers to more than 3 million that China Unicom added. The story was the same in December as well, when China Mobile added close to 3.2 million 3G subscribers to China Unicom's 3.5 million.

While China Mobile had a significant head-start given its huge 2G subscriber base, its TD-SCDMA 3G network is incompatible with most smartphones currently available in the market such as the iPhone. This requires handset vendors to come out with specially crafted phones for the carrier's proprietary network which has proved to be a huge deterrent. Meanwhile, China Unicom has been selling the iPhone since late-2009 and China Telecom will soon launch the iPhone 4S on March 9.

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