Million subscribers, to apple?
Well, i think on both sides what you have is a desire to stem a decline in the market share in the world's largest wireless market.
China mobile has seen its share of subscribers in this market decline to about 62% from 72% in 2009 when its rival china union come introduced the iphone.
At the same time, apple has seen its share of the smart phone market in china decline to about 6% from 10% two years ago.
So both of them are facing a decline in market share.
So how is the reception when iphoned hit the shelves today.
There were no big queues and that is kind of what we were expecting.
Yeah, there didn't seem to be as much excitement as people might have expected.
We sent reporters to three locations in beijing and shanghai and each of the locations that we went to, there were only about six people waiting when the doors opened.
Tim cook did appear at the shop at china mobile headquarters a nd handed out some autographed phones there, but at other locations things were fairly quiet.
Is this china mobile partnership going to give a boost to iphone sales?
If you look at the possible subscribers, it is 760 million.
Because the iphone is already available, it could be kind of insignificant.
Certainly apple will get a bump.
Analysts that we have spoken to at hsbc or i.b.c. seem to be forecasting about 10 million units sold through china mobile this year.
China mobile did claim they had about a million preorders before the device went on sale today.
What are some of the hurdles that apple is still facing in china?
Well, there are a couple.
Probably the biggest one is price.
The hand sets here cost over $700, which is very expensive to your average chinese user.
Another hurdle it also faces is the chinese preference for large large displace.
In china many people don't own a tablet and a flat scree n tv.
A lot of people buy one device for all of those purposes.
What they want is a mobile device with a large screen.
The iphone is only 4 inches.
Every other device that china mobile sells is alarminger than that and most are larger -- larger than that.
Most are 5 inches.
When tim cook appeared at the store today, he took some questions from commerce.
The first question he got from a customer is will apple release a large screen device and tim cook said they don't like to talk about their future projects.
Interesting.
Thank you so much.
He also autographed some of them.
Our technology reporter from beijing.
Here are some other companies we're watching out for today.
Google is diversifying into contact lenses.
Smart ones.
It is testing lenses that measure glucose levels in tears.
The project is part of google's secretive lab and couldard the challenge s of diabetes.
Nokia i s looking to replace their former c.e.o. michael elop.
And nintendo revised their forecast.
This text has been automatically generated. It may not be 100% accurate.
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