推荐看点
体育营销：品牌全攻略
利用大型体育赛事提升品牌知名度、企业形象直至提高企业市场占有率是目...
利用大型体育赛事提升品牌知名度、企业形象直至提高企业市场占有率是目...
超级女声整合营销的公关学思考
从2004年起，超级女声作为一个全民选秀节目红遍大江南北，湖南卫视近几...
从2004年起，超级女声作为一个全民选秀节目红遍大江南北，湖南卫视近几...
格林斯潘的经济神话
格林斯潘在人们的记忆中是一位化解危机的高手，人们忘不了他是如何带领...
格林斯潘在人们的记忆中是一位化解危机的高手，人们忘不了他是如何带领...
So investors cheered last fall amid widespread speculation that the two powerhouses were talking about teaming up to launch the iPhone in China. But even as smuggled versions of the iPhone (BusinessWeek.com, 1/24/07) became trophy gadgets for the country’s digital elite, talks stalled. And today, China Mobile made it official: Talks are off, a China Mobile spokesperson told reporters. Apple’s Hong Kong-based spokesperson would not comment.
The problem for Steve Jobs, it turns out, is that he chose a potential partner with an even stronger hand than his. China Mobile has 70% of the Chinese cellular market and likely had 2007 profits of $11.4 billion, up 28% over the previous year, according to an estimate by Macquarie Bank. The company does that without having to bother with handset sales in China, where the U.S. model of operators buying phones from vendors and then selling them to consumers isn’t popular.
Not a Lot of Options for AppleIt’s not surprising, therefore, that China Mobile wasn’t willing to go along with the sort of deal that Apple has cut with less formidable partners such as AT%26amp;T T. %26quot;They are just steamrolling over the competition at this point,%26quot; says Dave Carini, an analyst in Beijing with research firm Maverick China. %26quot;Things just look great for China Mobile right now.%26quot;
China Mobile’s near-monopoly discourages some would-be partners from even trying. %26quot;China Mobile is the dominant player [and] they have such strong bargaining power,%26quot; says Neil Shen, founding managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, the Hong Kong- and Beijing-based arm of Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital. For anyone thinking about trying to do something related to mobile music in China, %26quot;it just makes life more difficult,%26quot; says Shen.
So where does that now leave Apple? In the short term, without a lot of options. There’s only one other company, state-controlled China Unicom, that’s allowed to offer cellular service today in the country. The company has Houston Rockets basketball star Yao Ming featured in its ads, which could provide Apple with some of the pop-culture credibility it probably wants among young Chinese. But China Unicom has struggled for years after having been forced by the government to offer two networks, one using GSM technology and the other using Qualcomm’s (QCOM) CDMA technology. And the company might not even be around much longer. Rumors have swirled for months among people who follow the telecom in China that Beijing will restructure the industry and merge China Unicom into a fixed-line operator.
