China Unicom

China Unicom to launch its own smartphone line later this month. The new line of mobile devices are meant to rival Apple’s iPhone as well as Android handsets, as reported by the company spokeswoman.

A new smartphone called Wophone runs a proprietary operating system, announced by the company in March. Being the second largest mobile carrier in China, China Unicom has 180 million users. It faces strict competition in an app store business from Apple and Android vendors.

China Mobile, the largest Chinese carrier, is making another push to attract more customers and retain them as the competition in the market is tightening. The company is launching a new initiative to better promote its own mobile operating system by establishing an "innovation alliance" to further its development.

China Mobile has developed its mobile operating, OMS (Open Mobile System), last year. The operating system is based on Android, but was modified to localize it for the China market. Handsets that use the operating system have been branded as Ophones.

The report in the Wall Street Journal unveiled that China Unicom had not enough supply of Apple iPhone 4 devices during its launch on weekend. The report in the Journal said that China Unicom had received more than 200,000 pre-orders for the phone by early Saturday, when the phone went on sale.

Meantime, more than 40,000 iPhone 4 buyers got the device on Saturday. This compares to Unicom's 2009 iPhone launch after which the operator sold 100,000 handsets in about six weeks after its debut of the phone.

Second-largest Chinese wireless carrier China Unicom is warming up to carve a niche in the Android cell phone market, as the carrier introduces the first batch of its customized Android handsets (under the “Uphone moniker) in January 2010. However, the official release date has not been confirmed by the Chinese operator.

China Unicom, the second-largest Chinese carrier, is expanding its 3G wireless handset portfolio as the company has officially announced its new cell phone brand called the “Uphone". The device will run on the company’s proprietary “UniPlus" operating system, which is based on the Google Inc’s android platform.

 On Sunday China United Network Communications Co. Ltd. and China's sole payment service network, China Unionpay Co. Ltd., announced their strategic partnership for providing mobile payments in the country.

China Unicom subscribers will be offered China Unionpay service that enables users to make payments and transfer money among participating banks. Besides, the companies’ conjoint statement says that they will cooperate on the exploration of value-added services such as e-commerce payment applications and security services.