China Telecom plans to boost its smartphone volumes by 32% this year to meet the strong demand from its 3G customers.
China Telecom chief executive Wang Xiaochu said the company aims to sell 45 million CDMA smartphones in 2012 - around 56% of the targeted 80 million units of CDMA handsets, reports mainland media CCID.
Wang said China Telecom will initially focus on mid-tier smartphones priced between 700 yuan and 2000 yuan ($111 - $317) that supports multiple operating systems, and will target four main market segments including university, industrial and commercial districts, tier-two and tier-three cities, and enterprise application.
The operator, China’s smallest mobile carrier by subscribers, sold 34 million smartphones in 2010 – three times more than in 2009.
At present there are over 1,100 models of CDMA handsets available in China, of which 3G handset and smartphone models have exceed 400 and 100, respectively.
China Telecom, which had 33.4 million 3G subscribers by November, saw a robust growth in its 3G subscribers in 2011. The operator added 18.9 million new 3G users in the first 11 months of 2011, and signed up over 2 million new users each month since July, helped by the introduction of the 1000 yuan smartphones.
The company also increased the number of its CDMA partners to 410, and its sales points to over 80,000 across the country, Wang noted.
China Telecom has also been negotiating with Apple for years to bring the EVDO iPhone to the China market, in an attempt to compete against bigger rivals China Unicom and China Mobile.
Though both China Telecom and Apple declined to disclose the exact launch date, media reports that China Telecom will be offering iPhone to its 33.4 million users soon, as the regulatory body has recently approved Apple's application to launch a handset using the standard in China.