Reports in China are suggesting that authorities have begun removing Apple iPads from retail stores in the country following a court ruling that a local monitor company owns the right to the iPad name.

Updated below with clarification that the activity is taking place in one city, for now.

A report from Hebei Youth Daily [Chinese], cited by DigiCha, claims that some local Administrations of Industry and Commerce (AIC) have begun confiscating the product where it has been found on sale, in response to the ruling. Apple is appealing the decision, which could cost it millions to overcome.

It is also suggested that some outlets have opted to remove the device from their shelves to prevent potential issues with authorities. Such stores are apparently still selling the iPad, but customers are required to verbally ask for the device to avoid advertising the fact that it is on sale.

It remains unclear just how many stores and AIC groups are taking action but, suffice to say, Apple would be significantly affected if this were to be made official and extended across the country.

The Proview legal challenge, which began back in 2010, struck a massive blow to Apple, and the full repercussions of the ruling are as yet unclear.

China is a hugely important market for Apple, with CEO Tim Cook calling the country “very key” to Apple’s earnings results last July. China is shaping up to be a key focus for Apple this year, as Cook revealed when the company released its latest earnings report last month.

We’ve contacted Apple for comment on the report and will update this post with the company’s response.

Update: A report from iFeng [Chinese], translated by Penn Olson, clarifies that the iPad seizures are taking place in the city of Shijiazhuang only, in what appears to be a one off measure. It will be interesting to watch how this develops, as Chinese authorities have the eyes of the world on them.

Sources in China are reporting that the Nokia Lumia 800 will be launched in China in March, with the Windows Phone 7 device set to become available on China Telecom’s network, according to WMPowerUser.

The device has been spotted and photoed in China, which seems to confirm reports that Nokia and Microsoft are testing the Windows Phone 7 device, using the Tango operating system, in the country.

Photos of the phone, that were posted to Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo, show that the device is being run with the country’s third largest operator, with a view to launching next month. As yet, no pricing or further details of a possible introduction have been revealed.

The move would be a significant coup for China Telecom, as Nokia still maintains a strong brand in China in spite of the growth of Apple. It would also be another new addition to China Telecom’s device offering, which will soon include the iPhone.

Sources also speculate that the Lumia 900 is also being lined up for release in China, and the device is tipped to follow the Lumia 800 and launch one month later in April. It remains to be seen if Nokia will introduce lower-budget devices in the Lumia range, or its Asha series which targets emerging market users.

Microsoft took its first step towards bringing Lumia to China after it was rumoured to have inked a deal with retailer Suning last year, although the Redmond based giant neither confirmed nor commented on the speculation. Speaking at the AsiaD event, Andy Lees, who heads up Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, did confirm that a launch was scheduled for “some time” in 2012.

Nokia is placing greater emphasis on China after it announced plans to relocate its Asia Pacific head office from Singapore  to Beijing. Further cost cutting will see it move a significant proportion of its manufacturing to Asia too, as it slashes 4,000 jobs in Europe and Mexico.

We’ve reached out to Nokia and Microsoft for clarification on the Lumia 800′s China launch date.

Update: A Nokia representative told The Next Web that the company “does not comment on market speculation”.

Tencent this week revealed some impressive statistics around the success of its mobile gaming platform, Mobile QQ Game Hall, which has surpassed 200 million registered users.

According to a report from Marbridge Consulting which cites a Chinese news report, Tencent is seeing 13 million users on the platform every day, with usage peaking at more than 1 million concurrent gamers in the games platform.

In China’s fragmented handset market, Tencent has found success in its support of a range of platforms, including Symbian, Java, Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, while there is also an HTML 5 version.

Right now, the selection is fairly slim, with just “several dozen” games available. Tencent has claimed it is adding more titles to the collection of casual games, which already includes Chinese chess and Tetris, amongst others.

As you’d expect, the platform is linked to Tencent’s hugely popular Weibo service — which boasts more than 250 million members — and the company continues to further ‘socialize’ the gaming experience for users.

To give some comparison, Facebook just announced it is seeing 60 million users interacting with its apps each month, leaving Tencent’s figures to show just how developed China’s Web space is. Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo both have integrated games services and, with mobile a key Internet access point for many in China and Asia, a mobile games platform has the potential to succeed there.

Japanese firms DeNA and GREE have both taken huge strides with their mobile social gaming platforms. The firms are currently involved in a legal tangle but have been working to extend the range of their service worldwide, and both are active in China.

This month, GREE agreed a deal to bring its platform to Baidu Yi devices, building on a similar deal with Alibaba to take its gaming platform to Aliyun OS devices. While DeNA is also active in China after launching its Mobage gaming service in the country in July 2011.

Mobile QQ Game Hall can be accessed from a PC which made us initially hestitant of these figures, however we clarified with Marbridge who confirmed that the 200 million subscriber number is for mobile users only.

As the social media space in Western markets edges closer to the point of saturation, the Internet’s top firms are tightening their focus on emerging markets where they can continue to grow their user bases, activity and revenues.

With a population in excess of 1.3 billion, which makes it the world’s largest country, China is the epitome of that opportunity. As Facebook’s S1 filing noted however, entry into China is hugely complicated. Not only do authorities block Twitter, Facebook (and Google+ for that matter) from its 500 million plus Internet users, it also insists that Web firms manage and remove sensitive content from their platforms.

Over the last month, Facebook, Google and Twitter — three of the industry’s big guns — have each revealed glimpses of their distinctly different attitudes and approaches to China. Each is worthy of analysis as they eye up China’s potentially lucrative market

Facebook

Facebook and China has become a particularly hot topic since the company filed its IPO last week. The public documentation contained no fewer than 9 mentions of ‘China’, which included an admission that the firm may never be able to satisfy the country’s demands.

China is a large potential market for Facebook, but users are generally restricted from accessing Facebook from China. We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government.

The social network is blocked in China, however its top executives have always maintained that the country is a market that they would like to explore. During a TV interview last year, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that there was no immediate plan, just yet at least:

At some point I think there would be some discussion around what it would take to go [to China], and then we’d at that point have to figure out whether we were willing to do that.

His COO Sheryl Sandberg revealed that the company’s attitude to being blocked is somewhat more relaxed than others. Sandberg calling the blocking of the social network the Chinese government’s “choice” as neither of the two denounced the regime and its censorship.

Zuckerberg himself is known to have taken a personal interest in China. His girlfriend Priscilla Chan’s family has links there, he has taken up learning Mandarin and is curious about the country, having spent time there during 2010.

His visit to China was officially a holiday, but Chinese tech media reported a number of rumours during his time in the country. According to a report from Bloomberg, Zuckerberg met with Baidu (which is loosely an equivalent to Google in China) and Sina (owner of China’s top microblog) as well as Alibaba.

Facebook has been tipped to enter China through a partnership, which would help it leverage local market appeal and leave a more experienced and connected firm to manage relationships and concessions with the government.

It remains to be seen if and how such a setup would work, and whether such a move would be received negatively by Facebook users outside of China. Given the blacklash against Twitter’s move to support censorship, which is arguably just transparency, Facebook users may resent the company putting its principles aside for a piece of the Chinese pie.

Google

Google is the only member of the trio that is legally operational in China, despite of the fact that it relocated its search engine to Hong Kong in 2010. In spite of the move, the company holds the second largest share of revenue within China’s $866 million search market, although it does trail Baidu by almost 60 percent.

While it is negotiating the future of its Google Maps service in the country, as discussions with the government remain ongoing, other services in its portfolio have fallen victim to China’s Great Firewall censorship policy.

Access to Google+ has been blocked in the country since almost day one, Gmail has had issues, while Android had shaky times when access was blocked or loading sluggishly for many, however the issues were soon fixed.

Google has been outspoken in its criticism of China. Aside from relocating its search business to Hong Kong, the company’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently labelled its censorship measures as “a truly bad set of laws”. Schmidt called Hong Kong “the other China, which we like”, yet still Google continues to be focused on and running a number of services in China.

Given its battling approach, Google+ and other services are unlikely to be opened in China but the company is providing important services there, particularly on mobile, so its position appears to be safe.

Twitter

Twitter has perhaps been the most defiant of the Chinese regime. CEO Dick Costolo famously called the microblogging service “the free wing of the free speech party” but the introduction of a feature to allow censorship has seen him forced to clarify that the move wasn’t a precursor to entering China.

Costolo recently labelled China as “not a place that we could operate in”. Yet, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently visited the country leading to speculation that it might be trying to launch there. While Dorsey may well have been there in his capacity as founder of Square — the other company that he devotes half of his day to — China’s twiterrati were aflutter trying to ascertain exactly what was behind the trip.

Twitter may well have the hardest time establishing itself in China, assuming that it could agree on the necessary compromises in the first place, which is a big ask. Its equivalent microblogging services (Weibos) are thriving in its absence. Weibo services run by Sina and Tencent both have more than 250 million registered accounts each. That suggests that around half of all Internet users in the country are registered to each service.

Dorsey himself has lamented Twitter’s exclusion in China for some while. Last year, he claimed that the company wasn’t allowed to compete, as the Weibo services were in sole control of the market there.

Twitter’s censorship option would undoubtedly ‘work’ in China, where Sina Weibo’s rumour control team works 24 hour days to ‘unpollute’ content and false rumours in its service. However, with such strong words from two of its key executives, it remains to be seen if a compromise could ever be reached.

Conclusion

The fact that Facebook continues to “analyse” China and not rule the market out, makes it arguably more likely to move over there. That’s particularly true when considering the efforts that Mark Zuckerberg has made to network and meet key figures in the country.

Yet despite that, Twitter is the closest to being able to make a compromise, thanks to its new option of hiding tweets deemed unsuitable for users in selected countries. Such a prospect flies in the face of its public comments on China and, as we have said before, Twitter isn’t endorsing (or arguably keen on) censoring, it has just opted for a transparent approach.

There is no doubt that Google is the best-placed of the three. Though Google+ is blocked in China, the company is operational in the country where its services are generating revenue and its Android mobile operating system is well used. Though Android is being significantly altered by some of China’s tech industry, such as Baidu Yi which replaces Google’s services with Baidu’s.

In the case of Twitter and Facebook, even if they were to ‘sell out’ and compromise on censoring their content, there are no guarantees. As a feature article from Reuters suggests, it is entirely possible that Chinese authorities may be completely opposed to either entering the country in any capacity, even in partnership with a local company.

If the last month is anything to go by, there is likely to be plenty more speculation and news as the Web’s Western giants continue to size up the potential of China.

Google+ is now up to 90 million users worldwide and while the spotlight shines on its battle with Facebook and Twitter, and the ongoing enhancements it makes to its platform, Google says that the social network is making strong progress in Asia.

Asia is a regional that is largely dominated by Facebook, which has overtaken a number of rivals that once ruled markets across the continent, including Friendster, Hi5 and Google’s own Orkut. There are notable exceptions however, namely China, Japan and Korea, but in the latter two things are moving Facebook’s way slowly.

While Google carefully guards its user figures and doesn’t break out data based on country or region, Ryan Hayward, who oversees marketing for Google+ across Asia, told The Next Web that the social network is making good progress in the continent.

Hayward points to a number of areas which he says are helping Google+ record significant uptake from users and content creators across Asia.

Celebrities

Google has made a concerted push to gain visibility through the acquisition of high profile users, and that same methodology has been applied to Asia. The most pertinent example was the recent collaboration with Japanese super girl band AKB48 in December.

Hayward reveals that the girls, and there are 48 of them in the group, have accumulated more than 3.5 million followers collectively and “have been quite impactful about getting people to engage with Google+” in Japan, and other parts of Asia where they are popular.

Hayward cites the example of Yuko Oshima, whose 143,645 followers make her the most followed AKB48 member on Google+). Although she has considerably less followers than Britney Spears (1.6 million), Oshima’s fan engagement is considerably greater than the US popstar’s.

As stats from allmyplus show, the average post from Oshima receives more reshares than that of Spears (by 26 to 21), more than four times as many +1s (932 to 226) and more than five times as many comments (475 to 91).

Though Twitter is well established in Japan, which holds Twitter’s record for tweets per second, and Facebook is showing signs of growth there, it took both services some time to gain traction. Hayward says Google+ has made a promising start to life there.

With the AKB franchise set to expand across Asia — there is already a ‘sister’ group in Jakarta, and two others in Japan — Hayward is optimistic that the band will help Google+ bring more users on board along the way.

Politics

Politics has been a big driver of social media adoption in Asia generally, as noted watcher Dr. Michael Netzley observes, and Hayward says that Google is seeing impressive results in the area.

During the recent election in Taiwan, which drew global attention due to its links with China, Google+ usage “exploded” amongst political candidates. Indeed, the uptake was such that Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (77,428 followers) had ten times more followers than Barack Obama, although the US President’s recent usage of the hangout feature has seen his following grow to 380,000.

Defeated political rival and the country’s first ever female Presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen also built a significant following. Though her account details are set to private, allmyplus reveals her impressive engagement rates.

Hayward says that it isn’t entirely clear how Google+ took off amongst Taiwanese politicians, but the popularity of YouTube as a political communications tool may be key, given the work that Google has done to link its video service with the social network.

While Hayward notes that the recent State of the Union address helped increase Google+ profile amongst politicians in the US and elsewhere, he explains that political use of the site “started in Asia”.

Businesses

Google is particularly proud of the business usages of Google+ in Asia, which have been put to work in a number of ways by NGOs (non-government organisations) in particular.

In Japan, popular musician Ryichi Sakamoto hosted a hangout with fans before going on stage to perform in a charity which raised funds following the country’s tsunami disaster.

Google opened an office in Bangkok last year and it used its presence on the ground to run a Web education session with a number of NGOs and charities that operate in the country. Google showed the basics of Google+ and a number of other techniques to use data from the Internet and communicate via the Web.

As a result of the sessions, Google+ hangouts were used by a number of NGOs to help “puts a face on the tragedy” and attraction donations to help with the fallout from the worst flooding in more than a decade.

Away from non-profits, Google is seeing interest from corporates, two of its biggest examples of which are based in Japan. Toyota and Sony are strong users of Google+ and have both racked up an impressive followers number of 280,000 and 250,000 respectively. Both firms have users from across the world, of which Asia accounts for a significant number.

For Hayward, the attraction of Google+ for brands is the way that it allows them to personalise communication with customers like never before and nowhere else:

It’s the ability to communicate with more than just text, and beyond 140 characters,” he says. “Brands are using video to reach customers too, maybe not everyday, but it is more than just a neat feature to have.”

China

No talk of social media is complete without mention of China. The country recently passed half a billion Internet users and its authorative stance on foreign Webs service — which has seen a number blocked — makes it a hugely challenging market.

While Google has insisted that China is still a key part of its plans for the region, Google+ is blocked in the country, where it is only accessible through a virtual private network (VPN) system which bypasses the Great Firewall Web censors.

However, Google does still count on the support of one of the country’s most visible social media figures, artist and political activist Ai Weiwei, whose has quickly built 47,000 Google+ followers away from his 120,000 Twitter followers.

Weiwei ”made a concious choice” to use Google+, Hayward explains. “Even with it being blocked, he opted to use Google+ to help reach out” when rallying to raise funds to pay a tax bill levied upon him by the government last year.

The artist recently threatened to boycott Twitter in the wake of its move to permit censorship, however it is notable that his last update on Google+ is dated 18 January. While he has used it for key communications, his daily communications is dominated by Twitter and Weibo.

Real-name policy drawbacks in Asia

One notable roadblock for Google+ in Asia is the service insistence on real-names for its users. The company has introduced support for aliases but that is dependent on the registration of a full name first.

Culturally, a great number of Internet users in Asia use an alias online, some for fun reasons and others out of caution. Hayward admits that Google is aware that things are different in Asia, revealing that “there is a lot of debate about the topic at Google, as we try to support as many usage cases as possible.”

“There’s an understanding of a need to support pseudonymous but we are wary of anonymous users,” he continues. “You can see the impact that this has in the West [after the Anonymous group has brought down a number of sites] where a lot of people associate it with toxicity, whereas in Asia it’s a totally conventional thing. It’s a difficult question.”

Encouraging organic growth

Google is focusing on the markets where it is initially seeing growth, including Japan and India, and Hayward admits that it is taking a reactive position on building the social network. Rather than actively driving it, the company is watching to see where activity heats up before acting to develop it.

“When we see organic adoption,” Hayward explains, “We then try to figure out why it happened before we go out to try to make more of it by giving experts and celebs a platform.”

With that approach, Google if focusing on ramping the product up in markets where it is showing promise, such as Japan and India, rather than adopting an all out blanket-approach.

Lack of figures

One key area that Google+ is missing, particularly in comparison to other social networks, is hard figures to back its claims.

While Larry Page recently claimed that Google+ has 90 million users with an apparent daily usage rate of 60 percent, the latter of which raised questions, it does not break out data by country.

Google points out that a glance at the follower numbers of certain users that are prominent in Asia or Asian markets, for example AKB 48′s combined 3.5 million, is testament to its success in the region. However, it just leaves us a little unsure of exactly how much interest there is compared to Facebook, which puts user numbers on its site  and can be seen on Socialbakers among other places, and Twitter, which has had it user numbers approximated by country and by language of late.

Google isn’t trying to take over the world, and Hayward points out that “there’s a place for all social networks online, and we’re not looking to change that. People are adding it as a third of fourth pillar,” he adds, “and who knows what may happen with that going forward.”

While there is no doubt that it is bringing something new to Asia and seeing pick-up, the lack of hard data leaves us unsure as to whether Google+ is cutting into Facebook and Twitter in the region, and if so by how much.

Chinese video sharing site Tudou has introduced an enhanced sharing platform for Sina Weibo that will allow users of the microblogging site to more easily share content from its service, according to an announcement.

Tudou is the first video sharing company to take advantage of Sina Weibo’s new level of functionality, as it will looks to grow its visibility and usage among China’s 500 million plus Internet users.

The move is also significant because all Sina Weibo users that are not already Tudou members will be signed up automatically when they share content from the site on the Weibo service. That could well see Tudou, which is China’s second largest video site, bring in considerable numbers of new users from Sina Weibo’s 250 million user base.

Gary Wang, who is founder, chairman and CEO of Tudou, said that the company is “building a more powerful video user ecosystem” with the sharing system:

The Internet’s core strength lies in creating and sharing information. Sina Weibo creates strong interaction between its users, and Tudou generates deep emotional connections between Internet users and content. Creating and sharing content is at the core of the Internet, and Tudou’s cooperation with social networking sites such as Sina Weibo is a powerful combination which will deepen consumers’ online video and sharing experience.

Paragon Capital fund manager Kevin Pollack told Business Week that the move “is extremely positive for Tudou and could really boost Tudou’s numbers”, while it gained the seal of approval from co-founder Marc Van Chijs. Writing on his personal blog, the Dutchman, who is not longer involved in the company, called the new system an “excellent deal for both Tudou and Sina”.

The tie-up is a welcomed boost for Tudou as it comes at a time when the firm is under attack from arch-rival Youku. The latest of a series of legal scraps saw Youku last week file a lawsuit claiming that it incurred loses resulting from Tudou’s accusation that it had misused copyrighted content, as Reuters reports.

The news also had a positive impact on the stock market and, as Bloomberg notes, Tudou’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange “jumped the most since its initial public offering” in August.

There’s nothing like a social network IPO to get people interested in Asia. Well, going on the most significant one to date, which saw Facebook file for a $5 billion listing, that seems to be the case.

It’s generally accepted that Asia and other emerging markets are key regions that will see the social network continue to post growth; Western markets are far closer to saturation point having seen mainstream adoption for upwards of two or three years. Such a need to expand is now all the more crucial as Facebook becomes a listed company with shareholders.

As it closes in on a colossal one billion registered members, the media, the tech industry and Facebook itself are looking at Asia where it has already eliminated most of its competition. However, there seems to be an impression that Asia is troubling the firm or that Facebook is struggling there.

Established with room to grow

A glance at the World’s top twenty Facebook markets, using figures from SocialBakers, shows that the company is already well established in Asia.

India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan are all ranked in its top twenty, while other parts of the region are progressing with strong growth in member numbers.

What is notable about these Asian countries, and the region as a whole, is just how low that the “penetration” is, i.e. number of Facebook members compared to population figures.

While, on the face of the stats, Facebook could be seen as struggling in India (with less than 3 percent penetration), Indonesia (17 percent) and Thailand (21 percent) where its popular usage is significantly lower than the US (50 percent), UK (49 percent) and Canada (51 percent), it isn’t.

Looking at Asia as a whole, just five percent of people in the continent use Facebook, that’s only just above the rate in Africa. Asia is a work in progress and already responsible for more than 209 million users, that’s even with most of China’s 1.3 billion population omitted.

Facebook is still attracting new members within its varied ‘demographics’ and in some parts of Asia, such as India — which just passed Indonesia as the second largest country — it still rises. We can expect more organic growth in the country as celebrities, brands, politicians and peer groups continue to sign-up and incentivise others to do the same, forgoes rivals like Google’s Orkut which is big there.

However, equally, the gradual increase in Internet access will be telling too. While Asia is not likely to be as wired as Europe or North America any time soon, or perhaps ever, it could add another 200 million plus members if it were just to double its connectivity.

As we previously discussed, Internet penetration is not a great method with which to measure Web access in emerging markets as it doesn’t include mobile. But the metric can be used to highlight the potential for Internet growth in countries like India (where Internet penetration is less than 10 percent), Thailand (less than 30 percent) and Indonesia (less than 20 percent).

Growth in these markets is a boon to Facebook as it will open it up to new users and more traffic.

China won’t wait

China is very much a real change and it is common to muse over the censorship requirements that Facebook would need to compromise on to even enter China. The fact that the company itself is unsure whether it could ever reach a deal with authorities speaks volumes about the challenge, but another issue facing Zuckerberg’s firm is the fierce competition.

China comes in at 93 on Facebaker’s list with just short of 485,000 members. That number puts it just ahead of Cambodia and narrowly behind Ethiopia.

Those statistics are miniscule and Facebook would surely build on them were it available in China, but it would face a huge task to be relevant when Chinese Internet users already have similar services that are hugely popular today.

Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, though arguably more like Twitter, boast more than 250 million accounts each, while more direct Facebook-rivals Kaixin (120 million) and Renren (160 million) are also equally established in the space.

Patience in Asia is the challenge

That’s the key difference in challenges. In China, and to a lesser extent Japan and Korea, Facebook is still establishing itself but in the rest of Asia it is the Internet that is establishing itself. In the latter two places, it is making progress and forcing the established powers to move; Mixi partnered with Twitter to help ward off Facebook and Cyworld looked outside of Korea for growth.

Patience is the key virtue for Facebook as the Internet grows in emerging markets like Asia. The company has taken steps to help, with initiatives like Facebook Zero and its Mediatek partnership to put it on non-smartphones, but it could do more. With a $1 billion profit line from 2011 why not invest in developing the mobile Web in emerging markets? Assistance in India, for example, would  reap dividends with more users, greater ad spend and revenues over time.

To call Asia a struggle for Facebook is just plain wrong. Even with a blackout in China, the continent is responsible for more than 209 million users, that’s despite the fact it is only hitting five percent of people there.

Japanese mobile social gaming firm DeNA has announced a strategic alliance with Baidu that will see its Mobage games platform get its own dedicated section on the mobile app store for Baidu-powered smartphones.

The link-up will see Mobage titles available on the Yi Store, which comes preloaded on devices than run the Chinese search giant’s Baidu Yi operating system (OS). According to the firm, owners of Baidu Yi-based devices will be able to access the full catalogue of supported Android titles in China with just two taps from their home screen.

Writing on its Beat blog, Baidu described the addition of Mobage as a sweetener and perk that incentives the purchase of the Dell Streak Pro D43, which became the first Baidu Yi device to launch when it went on sale last month.

Baidu launched the Yi Store in September with an announcement that also laid out plans for the release of its own OS, which had been expected since March when company CEO Robin Li called it the first step in its “box computing” strategy.

Baidu Yi is a highly customised version of Android, in which all of Google’s services are replaced by Baidu’s own with access to books, maps and music services. The OS is heavily cloud-focused, with cloud-based backup, sharing and storage features built in.

The tie-up represents another step that DeNA has taken to increase its presence in China, as it looks to gain traction in the world’s largest mobile market. DeNA first launched Mobage in China for Android in July before adding support for iOS devices in November.

The company has already inked a similar deal with Alibaba to bring its Mobage gaming platform to Aliyun OS devices, which began with the DeNA service being preloaded on the K-touch W800.

China Telecom has confirmed that it will begin selling the Apple iPhone 4S in just over a month as its partnership with Apple is set to break rival China Unicom’s exclusive grip on the device.

News of the impending release from China’s third largest carrier is reported by China Daily (via 9to5mac), which cites a press release statement confirming that “China Telecom has already started preparatory work for the launch of the iPhone 4S.”

Rumours of China Telecom’s collaboration with Apple have been rife for some time, after the operator reportedly began training staff to sell the phone in September, however an exact launch day remains unclear at this stage. According to China Daily, the release will take place sometime between the end of February and the beginning of March.

The operator was reportedly granted a network license for the phone earlier this month, however it has lost time on Unicom which began selling the latest Apple device from launch. The first day of sales caused controversy and, though it sold out, scenes of chaos and violence at Apple’s Sanlitun store prompted sales of iPhone 4S to be called off across the country.

Confirmation of China Telecom’s impending partnership leaves China Mobile, the largest operator in the world, in the cold. The operator claims that Apple has promised to partner with it once it has finished testing its new telecom network this March, and such a move would massively increase Apple’s reach in the country.

Although a deal is yet to materialise, China Mobile already has more than 10 million iPhone users, all of whom use unlocked devices on its 2G network as the devices are incompatible with its TD-SCDMA-based 3G network.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley this week predicted that Apple could sell up to 40 million iPhones in China this year if it brings both China Telecom and China Mobile on board as partners. That’s a significant increase on the 15 million sales that it forecasts for China Unicom, although that figure is considerably greater than the 2-4 million units that the firm sees China Telecom selling.

China Unicom has added record numbers of 3G subscribers, which now stands at 36.3 million customers, although recent reports have suggested that its iPhone exclusivity may not be the contributing factor. The high level of customer acquisition is being put down to the sale of more affordable devices, that are up to 80% cheaper than the Apple smartphone.

China Mobile remains the largest network in the country with more than 645 million active members, ahead of China Unicom (195 million) and China Telecom (62 million).

Analysts at Morgan Stanley have predicted that Apple could sell more than 40 million iPhones in China this year, but only if the company partners with new operators in the country, according to a report from Apple Insider.

In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty revealed that, as things stand, the firm foresees that Apple could reach a maximum of 10% of China’s 150 million “high-end mobile subscribers” through its exclusive partnership with China Unicom. However, the addition of relationships with China Telecom and China Mobile could see the Cupertino-based firm more than double its sales in the country, Huberty said.

China Telecom is rumoured to be all set to begin selling the iPhone, after it reportedly gained regulatory approval, while China Mobile may not be far behind. The world’s largest operator has long been a rumoured target for Apple, and the companies will reportedly come together when the carrier has finished testing its new 3G network in March.

According to the bank’s research, a China Telecom partnership could add between 2-4 million new devices. While, assuming that the device reaches 20% of China Mobile’s subscriber base, as it has with Unicom, Huberty estimates that a partnership with the operator could sell 24 million devices this year, rising to 36 million units by 2013.

China Mobile has more than 10 million iPhone users on its network – despite not having an official partnership with Apple – and there is no doubt that adding the 640-million-customer-strong carrier would massively increase Apple’s reach in China.

That said, recent reports have shown the iPhone effect is being overshadowed by other devices for China Unicom. The operator has added a record numbers of 3G subscribers and boosted its market share through the sales of more affordable devices, that are up to 80% cheaper than Apple’s smartphone.

Apple’s iPhone 4S launch caused controversy and, though the device sold out on launch day, scenes of chaos and violence at its Sanlitun store prompted Apple to later call-off sales of the phone across the country.

While there is no doubt that Apple is popular amongst Chinese consumers, it remains unaffordable to a great many in the country, despite the growing affluence of China’s middle class. As we suggested last year, a lower-priced device would be hugely disruptive for China and Asia in general, which could open Apple and the iPhone to new demographics.

Image credit: Flickr user williamhook