The announcement comes during a busy month for China Mobile, which also announced its partnership with Dell to launch the computer maker’s first model of smartphone, and the launch of China’s first mobile application store.
While China Mobile announces its next move into mobile TV, China Unicom has been preparing for the launch of the Apple iPhone. While reports initially said the handset would launch at the end of the month, the companies have yet to announce a specific launch date.
China is already home to several popular models of touch screens through jail-broken iPhones and copycat models, not to mention the Google Android-sourced phones provided through rival China Mobile.
Western reports quote a China Unicom spokeswoman as saying negotiations with Apple are still ongoing, though it was widely reported that the market’s second-largest telco had signed a three-year contract with Apple.
However, while the market’s two leading telcos have plotted their growth, China Telecom announced a 29 per cent profit drop in the first half of 2009, citing rocketing marketing costs as the reason for its poor fiscal performance.
According to the company’s earnings report, China Telecom’s net profit plummeted to $1.32 billion from January to the end of June, compared to the $1.8 billion the previous year.
China Telecom also posted a 14 per cent rise in revenue and a customer increase of 11.4 million.
China Mobile claims 497 million subscribers in the market compared to China Unicom with 139 million and China Telecom with 39 million.
China overall claims 687 million mobile subscribers.