China Mobile Wants HK Market & China Unicom Wants UPhone

China Mobile will officially launch its app store, namely Mobile Market (MM) for HK market in 2011. In other words, oversea developers will be able to submit their application to MM via China Mobile HK company. With this strategy, China Mobile wants more HK local applications listed in MM to attract more HK subscribers.

China Mobile’s Mobile Market, probably the first app store operated by the service provider, was launched in 2009. By end of October this year, it says that Mobile Market’s users have reached 25 millions and 9 millions mobile clients have been installed; the number of registered development companies and individuals is close to 450,000 and over 100,000 applications are submitted, around 40,000 apps are currently on sale; The total doawnloads are over 60 millions.

Also reported today, China Unicom says in GSMA conference, its UPhone is expected to be in market by end of this year. Thanks for WCDMA and iPhone, China Unicom’ 3G is now leading the 3G market in China. By end of September this year, The number of China Unicom 3G subscribers have reached 10 millions. (no more than 10% of 3G users are iPhone users according to this news.) What we know about UPhone is very limited. The UPhone OS is called UniPlus, a system developed by China Unicom its own, and the UPhone will for sure pre-install China Unicom’s app store, WoStore. China Unicom has won the reputation in the 3G competition, its UPhone, obviously, is to compete with China Mobile’s OPhone.

However, if UPhone is launched, will the partnership between China Unicom and Apple be continued?