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17 Jan 2008
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) appears to have cracked the Chinese market at the expense of the iPhone, following a breakdown in talks between China Mobile and Apple.
RIM has secured the backing of China Mobile, while the iPhone has been spurned in a row over revenue.
This will come as a blow to Apple, as China Mobile's 332 million customers offer the largest number of subscribers of any single mobile phone company.
A spokesman for China Mobile said that talks with Apple had been " temporarily stopped" but did not confirm whether they would restart.
Other sources within the company said that problems arose because Apple wanted to control the value chain and had been asking for as much as 30 per cent of the revenues from iPhone sales.
"Of course we could not agree," Gao Nianshu, general manager of the data department at China Mobile, revealed in a talk to students.
Reports in Chinese newspapers suggest that the BlackBerry will go on sale in the region before the end of the month.
This follows years of effort by RIM to launch into the only Asian market it has yet to tap. RIM hinted at a deal with the Chinese firm back in July 2007.
However, the BlackBerry debut does not guarantee success for RIM, as China Unicom's rival RedBerr y handset sells for less in China.
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Old news and wrong news
The Blackberry deal is old news and the "talks ended with Apple" is simply wrong. CNBC?s Jim Goldman conducted a post MacWorld Keynote interview with Steve Jobs. Goldman asked Jobs about the reported ?end to talks? with China Mobile. According to Goldman, Steve Jobs said there were no such ongoing negotiations. He noted that there has been only one China Mobile representative that has visited Apple?s Cupertino HQ and that meeting took place months ago. My guess ? There have been some preliminary chats but ?negotiations? (serious back and forth over a contract) have yet to happen. AT&T made an iPhone deal with Apple without the benefit of dissecting the product. They put their faith in Apple and were rewarded. China Mobile may not take this approach. China (Nation/State) and China Mobile have made their new 3G (TD-SCDMA) network a priority (albeit a full-scale TD-SCDMA launch will likely be deferred until 2009). China Mobile will demand that the new iPhone support their new 3G network. And China Mobile may want ?hands on? testing with the new 3G iPhone before they hold serious contract talks. Apple almost certainly has the new 3G model under lock-in-key in Cupertino. While the new model may be relatively refined, Apple may not be ready to let China Mobile engineers run network tests with their new ?oh so gorgeous? baby ? just yet. CNBC?s Jim Goldman video interview with Steve Jobs(Regarding China Mobile) Steve Jobs: ?It?s very strange ? we?ve met once with one of their representatives. There have never been any ?hot and heavy? discussions either ?on? or ?off? ? someone is just making this stuff up.?
Posted by: Dan Butterfield 17 Jan 2008