Beijing: Apple Inc may sell more than three million iPhones in China during the next year as it enters the world's largest wireless market.
More than 10 per cent of the 32.5 million iPhones Apple is projected to ship worldwide through September 2010 will be sold in China, according to Piper Jaffray & Co. China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier, said last week it will begin offering the 3G and 3GS models of the handset next quarter.
"China was the last missing piece to the iPhone international story," said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. He recommends buying Cupertino, California-based Apple's shares, which he doesn't own.
The agreement allows Apple, which has sold more than 26 million iPhones in over 80 markets, to enter a country with more wireless subscribers than the combined populations of the US, Japan and Germany. China has room to grow because almost half of Chinese people have no mobile phones and companies are beginning to roll out third-generation services.
Apple, whose shares rose to a one-year high on Friday after the announcement, said the agreement isn't exclusive to Unicom. Beijing-based Unicom's shares rose 0.4 per cent to HK$10.72 as of 10:01am yesterday in Hong Kong trading, compared with a 1.4 per cent fall in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Jill Tan, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman at Apple, declined to comment on the company's projected sales in China.
Shipments of smart phones will more than triple in China by 2013 from 11 million last year, said Aloysius Choong, a Singapore-based analyst at research firm IDC.
