According to an eye-opening projection today from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, Apple’s Chinese investment will begin paying enormous dividends next year.
Just two weeks ago, massive crowds outside of Beijing’s Apple Store caused Chinese police to deploy crowd-control measures to ease the iPhone 4S frenzy caused by the device’s long-anticipated arrival.
So unruly were Apple fans that the company was forced to strip the Aple Stores of their iPhone 4S unventory and revert back to selling the smartphones online only in China for the time being.
Not surprisingly, in response to the iPhone 4S frenzy, China is now seen as Apple’s next big market to conquer. In order to do so, says investment bank Morgan Stanley, Apple will all but certainly team with both China Telecom and China Mobile to make future generations of the iPhone available on all three Chinese carriers.
With such an eventuality likely before year’s end, Huberty predicts that some 40 million iPhones will be sold in China in 2013. That’s not bad, considering that Apple sold 68.5 million iPhones all around the world in 2011.
Huberty also believes that Apple’s Chinese ambitions will be greatly helped by the fact that the company’s sixth-generation iPhone may be compatible with China Mobile’s approaching 4G TD-LTE network.
