China Unicom, the sole carrier in China to sell Apple’s iPhone, is reportedly planning to launch its own smartphone, “Uphone”, at the end of January.
Unicom will release five Uphone models manufactured by five vendors, including Huawei Technologies, ZTE, Motorola and Inventec.
All Uphones will be running on a self-developed operating system, dubbed UniPlus, according to ccid.com.
Unicom, which launched its own app store, WoStore, in November, is the second mobile operator in China to launch its self-developed smartphone platform.
Rival China Mobile launched its Android-based platform, Ophone, in September 2009, in an attempt to compete with Apple’s iPhone.
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