China Mobile is Heavily Promoting iPhone, iPad

Now that Apple and China Mobile have reached an agreement, China Mobile, in an aggressive campaign, is dedicating almost all its ad apace to the iPhone and iPad, according to AppsGoneFree on Friday. The reason may be competition from China Unicom and Telecom combined with a desire to make sure the agreement pays off.

The ad campaign looks to be massive and appears everywhere China Mobile has an ad opportunity: walls, floors, and tabletops. According to Joe White, images from PRC and Me show how one store in Link City, Shenzhen has been completely covered with Apple promotional material.

After years of negotiation, "...it looks like the carrier is doing everything it can to ensure that its long-anticipated iPhone deal with Apple is going to pay off," Mr. White wrote.

What's the ROI for Apple? China Mobile has 740 million subscribers, just about twice the U.S. total population. Estimates are that Apple could initially sell 20 million iPhones in China in 2014 with US$10 billion in revenue for Apple. But the future looks even better with a ramp to perhaps 100 million iPhones annually beyond 2015.

Great patience has finally paid off, and all this looks very promising for Apple.