On October 17th, iPhone 6 will be officially on sale in each channel, as the main channels in China, the three major operators will conduct another battle for iPhone subscribers. China Mobile hasn’t announced contact price for iPhone 6 until yesterday, which attracted much attention from outside.
China Mobile will no longer set exclusive contract packages for iPhone 6, but adopts a device-package separation policy, namely the devices and packages are treated separately. iPhone 6 will use the 4G basic package of China Mobile and added with complimentary tariff, the source said, China Mobile required its branches to adjust the subsidies based on local conditions, but the limit is 50%.
As Tencent reported, the on sale iPhone 6 of China Mobile will be divided into contract and non-contract versions, the difference is that the contract version has a higher subsidy, which is about 50%, while the non-contract version is about 25%. We have learned from the pre-sale hotline of China Mobile, the non-contract version doesn’t support all the networks, it supports the 2G/3G/4G (TD-LTE) networks of China Mobile in domestic, while another FDD-LTE can only be opened when roaming abroad.
Compared with the previous exclusive contract packages of iPhone previously, this device-package separation policy reduces the tariff threshold of iPhone 6, although the “FREE” purchasing plan doesn’t exist anymore, but subscribers can choose the lowest 18 yuan monthly package, while the subsidy is basically the same as before, with the highest of about 50%.
According to informed sources, the fundamental reason why China Mobile is moving slowly is that its need for iPhone is not as eager as China Unicom and China Telecom. This is because all the versions of iPhone in domestic support 4G network of China Mobile, with the advantage of the market share, the other subscribers will possibly convert into subscribers of China Mobile.
When the two goals of China Mobile, namely first increase the subscribers of 4G, and second improve the business income of traffic data, are taken into consideration, "although the DOU that iPhone brings is far higher than other brands, but the contribution to traffic data of this belated iPhone is not optimistic." an analyst said.