Hasta La Gadget!

When you own a feature phone, chances are beyond the need for a plan to call and text, there is no need for a data plan since your phone either can’t support it, or you’ll be stuck with EDGE which is infuriating slow and there would be no point. That being said, it seems that with the iPhone’s market share in China on the rise, it looks like high-speed data subscriptions are on the rise too. This is according to data gather by Cantor Fitzgerald analyst, Brian White, who has reported that mainly due to the iPhone, China Mobile has managed to 14 million more high-speed data subscribers in the month of January alone, a growth which is apparently faster than any other time in history.

Given that China Mobile is pretty much the largest carrier in the country, and possibly one of the largest in the world, it is unsurprising that they have managed to nab that many new high-speed data subscribers. However it should be noted that despite rumors of a deal with Apple to finally offer the iPhone on its network, the carrier and Apple only managed to reach an agreement in late 2013, where they also finally deployed and certified its own TD-LTE 4G network, a frequency which is supported by the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c. This is versus the carrier’s TD-SCDMA 3G network which is not supported by current and previous iPhone models.

iPhone Responsible For China Mobile’s Increase In High-Speed Data Subscriptions original content from Ubergizmo.

Apple has gained an entire percentage point of market share and cracked the top five smartphone manufacturers, according to the latest figures from research firm IDC. Apple’s share rose from 6 to 7 percent during the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new report (via WSJ) and though that isn’t a huge bump, it makes Apple the fifth-largest smartphone maker in China.

There’s also reason to believe that Apple could climb higher still: These numbers don’t include any sales made through Apple’s partnership with China Mobile, which only began selling the iPhone on January 17, and is in the process of building out its new network to support the device across a wider swath of the population.

Apple’s rise late last year might have something to do with the fact that the company opted to launch its latest iPhone models in the Greater China market simultaneously with its North American and major European market launches – this marks the first time it has done that, and likely helped boost overall iPhone sales by a considerable margin in the company’s fiscal holiday quarter. Apple also won a bigger chunk of a Chinese smartphone market that isn’t growing with nearly the speed it has in the past, so the China Mobile deal is even more significant, as it represents a way for Apple to grow its share in the key market without having to seek out new smartphone buyers.

For Apple, the China Mobile deal represents a huge potential new buyer pool, and signs are good if the iPhone 5s and 5c are already helping drive up their share. But China’s own Xiaomi is nipping at its heels, coming in sixth overall among smartphone makers in the country per IDC, so that could make for a tight race between the two as the Android-based startup OEM continues to chart impressive growth at home.

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