Mobile carriers slash iPhone 4S price by 2,000 yuan
By Zhu Shenshen | 2012-9-17 | ONLINE EDITION
THE price of iPhone 4S sold by China Telecom and China Unicom's outlets dropped by as much as 2,000 yuan (US$317) after Apple Inc released iPhone 5 in the United States last week, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.
The two mobile carriers, which are official partners of Apple on iPhone on the mainland, expect to sell iPhone 5 by the end of this year and prepare to provide the Nano-SIM (subscriber identity module) card required for iPhone 5.
Starting from Wednesday, iPhone 4S sold without contracts at China Telecom outlets will cost from 4,488 to 4,888 yuan. The 64GB iPhone 4S, which supports China Telecom's CDMA (code division multiple access) network, will cost 4,888 yuan, 2,000 yuan cheaper, China Telecom said on its Website.
Before that, China Unicom has cut the price of non-contract iPhone 4S by 500 to 700 yuan starting from last Friday.
"Both China Telecom and China Unicom promised to sell many iPhone 4S but now they still have about one-third of their inventories," said a person familiar to both carriers, who declined to be named. "They have to clear up inventories with lower prices before iPhone 5 comes to China."
Apple unveiled iPhone 5 with a bigger display and faster LTE wireless capability at a media event in San Francisco last week.
The iPhone 5 has a 4-inch screen compared with the 3.5-inch display used by the previous models. For the slim design, it requires a smaller SIM card.
The first batch of iPhone 5 will be on shelf in regions including the United States and Hong Kong. It will probably take three months for Apple to get necessary approval and certification to sell iPhone in the mainland market.
China Telecom is going to introduce the new SIM card for iPhone 5 "as soon as possible," China Telecom said on its Website.
