China Mobile did report its first loss of annual profits in 14 years (which is a long time), being the world’s largest carrier in terms of subscribers, although they did mention that they have decided to invest heavily investing in its 4G network. So far, we do know that China Mobile has sold approximately 1.34 million LTE-enabled smartphones, where the majority of those were Apple’s iPhone. In fact, China Mobile also did make a similar order to Apple recently.
Analysts have stepped forward after gazing into their proverbial crystal balls and claim that China Mobile would be selling at least 15 million to 17 million iPhones in 2014, although if one were to take the 1 million plus figure at this point in time into consideration, then such lofty predictions would seem to be off the charts. In fact, China Mobile has aimed really high, hoping to sell 100 million LTE-enabled phones and garner 50 million LTE users before this year is over. Do you think that China Mobile will be able to achieve their target, or is it an impossible one that even sporting giant adidas would loathe to set?
China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua, shared, “Most of our 1.34 million 4G users are using an iPhone. It’s just been getting started for one or two months. So far it’s hard to tell how that will affect our business.”