From January 17th 2014 the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C will be available on China Mobile – the world’s largest wireless carrier with 760 million customers, reports cnet.com.
The arrangement has been on the cards for a long time, with Apple CEO Tim Cook making two high profile visits to China to meet representatives of China Mobile. There had been talk of the launch taking place this month, but both firms are now saying it will happen in 2014.
Mr Cook said: “China is an extremely important market for Apple and our partnership with China Mobile presents us the opportunity to bring iPhone to the customers of the world’s largest network.”
Chinese consumers can already get the iPhone on China Unicom and China Telecom, but neither has quite the same customer base as China Mobile. According to bbc.co.uk, Apple has struggled to break into the Chinese market, partly because its rivals have cheaper handsets available, which may have been why the cheaper iPhone 5C was launched.
BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones described the deal between the two companies as a “long running soap opera”. In his opinion, Apple does not need to become the number one-selling brand to make a success of itself in the country – the Chinese generally have a big appetite for luxury products, so Apple just needs to establish itself as such.
