UPDATE: Apple, China Unicom To Offer IPhone 4 In China From Saturday

Apple Inc. (AAPL) and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (CHU) will start offering Apple's iPhone 4 smartphone in China on Saturday, the companies said Monday, in a move that will likely boost Apple's shipments of the popular device and help the Chinese telecommunications operator attract more users to its third-generation mobile services.

Apple devices are popular in China but have often been released there months after launching in other countries. The iPhone 4 launched in countries including the U.S. in late June.

China Unicom is competing with rival operators China Mobile Ltd. and China Telecom Corp. in offering smartphones to attract users to 3G services, which are more expensive but offer faster data transfers. China Unicom had the second-highest number of 3G users among the three carriers at the end of June. It had 7.56 million 3G users, compared with 7.18 million for China Telecom and 10.46 million for China Mobile.

Apple will sell the iPhone 4 at its retail stores and China Unicom will offer it bundled with a mobile service contract.

China Unicom took nearly 50,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4 on Friday, the first day it was accepting pre-orders, said a China Unicom news department official who declined to be named.

That marks a faster start to sales than last year, when China Unicom said it sold 100,000 iPhones in the roughly six weeks after it launched older versions of the handset in late October.

Apple also said it will open two new Apple retail stores Saturday, one in Beijing and another in Shanghai. Apple already has one store in each city and has said it plans to open 25 stores in China by the end of next year.

Apple started offering Wi-Fi models of its iPad tablet computer in China on Friday but didn't say when it might launch a version with cellular capabilities in the country. China Unicom has said it hopes to offer the iPad as well.

As of the second quarter, Apple was the fifth-largest smartphone vendor in China with a 7.1% share of shipments, according to Beijing research firm Analysys International. Nokia Corp. had the largest share with 26.7%.

-By Owen Fletcher, Dow Jones Newswires; 8610 8400 7702; owen.fletcher@dowjones.com

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