iPhone 6 will be available in China as early as the 19th; carriers will cancel contract phones

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This year, iPhone 6 will be launched in China simultaneously with the rest of the world, just like last year. For the first time, China Mobile will become the first global launch operator along with China Telecom and China Unicom.

As the release date of Apple's new generation smartphone iPhone 6 approaches, the sales battle of iPhone 6 among the three major domestic operators has reignited. After the iPhone 6 reservation pages were announced one after another, the official domestic delivery time has also been basically determined.

According to Tencent Technology, the iPhone 6 will be launched in China at the same time as last year, and China Mobile will be the first operator to launch the iPhone 6 globally, along with China Telecom and China Unicom. Currently, China Unicom has started pre-sales of the iPhone 6, and the earliest delivery date has also been revealed, which is expected to be the first to ship on September 19.

At the same time, Tencent Technology also discovered from the iPhone 6 pre-order page on Hunan Mobile's official website that the iPhone 6 will be divided into two versions, 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches. The 4.7-inch version of iPhone 6 will be released earlier than the 5.5-inch version, and will also be officially available for sale on September 19.

Domestic sales start on the 19th at the earliest

On the evening of September 1st, China Mobile took the lead in launching the iPhone 6 reservation page. According to the reservation rules, customers who participate in this reservation registration can enjoy priority purchasing rights for China Mobile's new 4G version of the phone.

After that, on September 4, China Telecom also opened the reservation for iPhone 6. The reservation page of China Telecom not only provided the appearance of iPhone 6, but also exposed some parameters of iPhone 6. According to the reservation page of Beijing Telecom, users who successfully made reservations and finally purchased the phone can also get a 200 yuan telecom recharge card.

On the same day, China Unicom also launched the reservation for iPhone 6, and in the reservation slogan, it used the slogan "Dual 4G, Dual 100M", hinting at the advantages of Unicom's FDD/TDD dual networks.

Subsequently, Tencent Technology learned again from China Unicom that it will start pre-sale of iPhone 6 in the early morning of September 9, and the deadline is September 19. From the Guangdong Unicom online business hall, it can be seen that its iPhone 6 pre-sale page has been launched.

According to the policy announced by Guangdong Unicom's online business hall, users only need to pay 200 yuan to enjoy two generous gifts: users who successfully make a reservation will have priority delivery rights for iPhone 6, and users who officially place an order before October 31 will receive an additional 400 yuan recharge card.

It is understood that although the three major domestic operators have announced the simultaneous introduction of iPhone 6, the specific delivery dates have mostly not been announced.

According to a source from Guangdong Unicom who revealed to Tencent Technology, based on the pre-sale operation of iPhone 5s last year, Guangdong Unicom will start shipping immediately after the pre-sale period ends. In other words, the pre-sale deadline on the 19th will be the shipping time.

On the Hunan Mobile official website, in addition to announcing the official sales date on the 19th, the detailed parameters of the iPhone 6 are also listed at a glance.

The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 is available in four configurations: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. It comes in three colors: gold, white, and black. The screen is made of sapphire glass, and the main screen resolution is 1134x750 pixels. It has an Apple A8 quad-core processor. It has an iOS 8.0 operating system. It has an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2.1-megapixel front camera. The phone size is 138x67x7mm. It supports Nano SIM cards, single card multi-mode, and supports waterproof and dustproof. It does not support capacity expansion, and has a non-removable battery. The parameters of the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 are not available at this time. The above product information is for reference only, and the final information is subject to the official announcement of Apple.

However, compared with the release time, the outside world is more concerned about how the operators will sell the iPhone 6 after being affected by policies, reducing marketing costs and reducing terminal subsidies.

In this regard, the above-mentioned insider revealed that in the past, operators would provide huge subsidies for iPhone, which was the biggest bonus Apple enjoyed. However, due to the impact of the policy this time, the three major operators may all adopt the bare-metal sales model, that is, no longer sell contract phones and no longer directly subsidize the iPhone 6.

Currently, operators no longer promote the "prepay phone bills and buy a phone for free" campaign for other brands of terminals. However, in order to attract high-end customers, operators still adopt the indirect subsidy method of giving away phone bills or data traffic when buying a terminal.

As for the price, it is rumored online that the starting price of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 in China (16G) is 5288, and the starting price of the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 in China (16G) is 6288. It is not yet certain whether the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 will be included in the first batch of shipments.

Network becomes the focus of competition

It is understood that Apple's support mode for the three operators on iPhone 6 is basically the same. Both the Chinese and Hong Kong versions of iPhone 6 support seven modes (GSM, EVDO, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000, FDD LTE, TDD LTE), covering all the standards of the three major operators from 2G, 3G to 4G, so the iPhone purchased from any one of them is actually the same.

Since there is no concept of contract phones, the price of iPhone 6 bare phones from different manufacturers will basically remain the same, so for purchasing users, the ultimate consideration is the network.

At present, China Mobile's 4G network has relatively wide coverage and has withstood the test of a certain period of market experience. It has certain advantages over China Unicom and China Telecom.

According to the data disclosed by the three major operators, China Mobile has more than 400,000 TD-LTE base stations, covering more than 300 cities, and 4G has been commercially available for more than half a year. However, the construction of TD-LTE of China Telecom and China Unicom is actually progressing slowly. For example, Unicom has less than 6,000 TD-LTE base stations. In terms of FDD, China Telecom and China Unicom were just approved to expand the pilot at the end of August to conduct TD/FDD hybrid networking experiments in 40 cities. Currently, 4G is still in the trial commercial stage.

But there are also outside reports that the China Mobile version of iPhone 6 is not 7-mode but 5-mode. If this is true, it means that China Telecom and China Unicom's FDD/TDD dual networks still have certain advantages.