China Unicom posts ad for iPhone

@PED – Thanks for the mention and for your links to iPhonAsia and AAPL Sanity.

@KenC – Thanks for the compliment and link. I’ve seen your comments on many articles and I know that you’ve spent time in China and pay close attention to the telecom industry and Apple. Always appreciate your insights and commentary.

I agree with your point about China Unicom using iPhone and other popular smartphones as a means to promote their “soon to be launched” WCDMA 3G network. They never actually say they have an iPhone deal on the site. Yet it is still very much out of bounds to splash iPhone all over the China Unicom Shanghai website unless they have approval from both the parent corp. (China Unicom HK) and Apple. Doubt they received any such approval.

Everything I’m picking up is that the deal is very close to being done. MIIT blessing is still a very important step. I expect that Apple executive management will very soon make a trip to Beijing to wrap things up … also as a show of respect for the China Unicom team that just spent two weeks in Cupertino.

Something I noticed on the China Unicom site was the sub-link to further promote iPhone features and benefits via China Unicom…Including:

• Wave-to-pay

• Mobile TV (CCTV heavily promoting this in China)

• Tethering

• Video Conferencing

Of particular interest to me is the wave-to-pay promotion. Here’s my somewhat suspect translation from Mandarin:

“Near-Field-Communication (NFC) swipe card handset a.k.a. wave-to-pay, offers convenience for those who use public transportation. It’s possible to use a handset swipe card to buy a ticket. This wave-to-pay has replaced the former public transportation IC card. Using the swipe card handset for shopping eliminates the needs to carrying cash. Using wave-to-pay also makes it easy to pay in the ferry terminal. Through the swipe card, the handset (phone) can purchase your passage and avoid the worry of lining up to purchase tickets. Not only does this technology eliminate the need to carry a public transportation IC card, you don’t even need a bankcard. All you need is the wave-to-pay handset (phone), to buy a ticket and do your shopping. One machine in the hand, opens access, and gives you control. Wave-to-pay makes life more convenient.”

Here’s Google’s translation >

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sh.chinaunicom.com%2F3G%2F3%2F3_3.html&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&history_state0=

Dan's blog is the best for understanding the Chinese mobile market. I highly recommend it:

http://idannyb.wordpress.com/

My interpretation of Unicom's actions, based upon seeing all of those handsets like the iPhone, G1, Experia, N97, is that Unicom is promoting the rollout of their 3G WDCMA network, by showing all the advanced handsets that could be used on it, not that they are actually going to be selling those handsets. It's more the, our new network is advanced, look at all the top handsets designed to use it.