China Mobile reports its first loss of annual profits in 14 years as the world's largest carrier by subscribers is heavily investing in its 4G network. The carrier has sold roughly 1.34 LTE-enabled smartphones, most of which were iPhones. It recently made a similar order to Apple, which the company fulfilled in January.
Analysts have predicted that China Mobile will sell at least 15-17 million iPhones in 2014, but at this rate those predictions seem a bit off. The carrier plans to sell 100 million LTE-enabled phones and boast 50 million LTE users by year's end.
"Most of our 1.34 million 4G users are using an iPhone," said China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua. "It's just been getting started for one or two months. So far it's hard to tell how that will affect our business."
The reason behind the drop in China Mobile's profits is considered to be a mixture between its 4G infrastructure investment and lower SMS revenue. According to analysts, the iPhone 5s has about 12% share of all iOS devices in China, while the iPhone 5c stands at just 2%.
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