One morning this month, Jessie Fang was thrilled to see on her way to work that China Mobile was advertising the iPhone 4. But when the tourism sales manager went to one of the mobile operator’s shops, she discovered that it has not yet started distributing the wildly popular device.
What the ad on the Beijing subway promotes is a series of new monthly packages under which subscribers are promised cash refunds if they commit to a certain amount of voice and data spending per month on a newly-bought smartphone.
The scheme comes as China’s telecom operators are on the verge of adjusting their smartphone subsidy strategies – a step which could eventually drive their profit margins down closer to the levels seen at operators in more mature markets.