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Consumer Electronics

China Mobile (CHL) Backs Off Apple (AAPL) iPhone Again

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The cat-and-mouse game between China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) over the release of the iPhone in China continues. China Mobile has over 300 million subscribers and that figure is growing rapidly each quarter.

The chief of China Mobile told the world that there are no negotiations. He says the business models of the two companies like are not compatible. That probably means that Apple’s desire to share subscriber revenue from its phones is not in the cards if it wants to do business with the world’s largest cellphone company.

According to TMCnet "China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou said Saturday that such business concerns have prevented the two sides from initiating talks to sell the Apple phone system in China."

The comments are a reminder that the Apple iPhone’s future in China is in trouble before Jobs sells his first handset through a carrier there. Tens of thousands of "unlocked" iPhones are sold in China, but, worse, so are a huge number of "knock-offs."

Apple is not going to get a revenue-sharing in China which means that once it does enter the market and gets access to the China Mobile customers, iPhone revenue expectations for the PC and consumer electronics will be very modest.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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