China Mobile playing dirty with iPhone retaillers in China?

Seth Weintraub
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November 22, 2009
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According to iPhonAsia (translations of orig appreciated), China Mobile, the biggest mobile operator in the world with over 600 million subscribers, is telling its retail partners that it cannot advertise or carry the iPhone. China Unicom, the second largest Chinese carrier, won the non-exclusive right to carry the iPhone and began selling the device last month.

The distributors that received the China Mobile notice include: Gome, Suning, Zoomflight, Dixintong (our fav!) (D-Phone), Tongwanbao and Kinfic. The China Mobile letter further warns these distributors to NOT display iPhones nor any iPhone related marketing materials.

Many cell phone distributors received formal notification that “Selling iPhones is not recommended,” or “Selling iPhones is not allowed or China Mobile will fine you or stop cooperation with you.”

Wow. Is this how they roll over there? They make Verizon and AT&T's little sissy war seem silly.  But there might be a legal basis for the behavior.  The letter says:

Any social channel that signed a contract with us (China Mobile) is not allowed to engage and process related business for our competitors, is not allowed to display and sell competitors’ products, is not allowed to market or recommend competitors’ products in any form.

Western companies Carrefour (French) and Best Buy(US) were not on China Mobile’s “warning letter” list. Both were selling iPhones in Beijing.

Comments (8)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 22, 2009 - 11:09am

me hate you long time

Oflife (not verified) | November 22, 2009 - 3:52pm

My employer owns the ophone domain and is developing a product tentatively known as the ophone. (Conceived many years before the iPhone by the way.) Anyway, China has blocked the ophone.com domain - and a chinese company, with the full knowledge of our own work, has started to use the ophone name too. They do not adhere to the same legal and/or business practices of the West - yet. Things will change though.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 23, 2009 - 7:18am

This happens in a communist dictatorship?

 

Go figure.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 24, 2009 - 4:29am

So you're suggesting by registering a domain name one could gain exclusive, worldwide rights to its associated marks?

That's a new low even for trademark trolls.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 22, 2009 - 6:50pm

This site assigns this name to me: "9to5Mac Noob"   wh-the-hell?

To the ophone dude, 1, a domain name is not a cell phone name. 2, did your company got the name early enough?  3. (unlikely) did your company register the name in China?

Oflife (not verified) | November 23, 2009 - 1:11am

No, it's not registered in china, but a teaser page was put up (years ago) and you would have thought they would have made the effort to contact the owner as a courtesy at the very least.

iPhone Deals (not verified) | November 22, 2009 - 6:54pm

The government still reigns supreme in China. Oh well, just follow whatever the law says to avoid further conflict. There are lots of other substitutes for iphone.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 23, 2009 - 4:58am

"Wow. Is this how they roll over there?"

It's the same the world over.

This reminds me of Microsoft pre 2000.