Five Million iPhones for China

Years after the country boasted of its own home grown iPhone clones, it's time the real thing comes to the Chinese market. Chinese Mobile Operator China Unicom seems pretty excited about the Apple iPhone's prospects in China, which probably explains the reason why it has ordered a few million iPhones (how does 5 million sound?) it envisions selling in the country.
Just a few weeks after China Unicom signed a treaty with Apple, it has finalized this deal that is expected to be worth over $1.46 billion. Note that China Unicom will now exclusively sell iPhones in China. The larger operator China Mobile seems happy with the oPhone for the time being, we guess. As of now, we do not have details as to how the revenue and sales profits would be shared between Apple and China Unicom.

As for the iPhone, it is expected to sell for $350 and $700 for the 8GB and the 16GB versions respectively in China. The phone will obviously face stiff competition from well endowed similar looking clones (remember the Meizu MB, anyone?) that makes the iPhone look like an expensive brick. Then there are the new Android oPhone based phones, including the Dell one that is expected to land there soon