The CEO of China Unicom, China's No 2 mobile carrier and the only one licensed to sell Apple's famous iPhone in China, confirmed Friday that the company is likely to reduce the price for the trendy handsets to attract more consumers.

"It is better to be cheaper for iPhones in China," Chang Xiaobing said at the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Merrill Lynch, one of the world's biggest brokerage, recently said in a report that China Unicom may reduce the price of iPhones by 20 to 30 percent at the end of March, lowering the price to 3,000 yuan ($439.46) to 3,500 yuan from the current 4,999 yuan to 6,999 yuan. Unicom may enable the Wi-Fi function, according to the report, which Chang also confirmed..

The company disabled Wi-Fi functionality on the first batch of handsets sold in China.

WiFi was temporarily banned on the mainland, where an alternative called WAPI is being pushed by the government. WAPI stands for WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure, and it is the Chinese National Standard for Wireless LAN.

source:chinadaily