After two days, China Mobile has pre-orders for just 100,000 Apple iPhone 5s and Apple iPhone 5c units

If Apple thought that opening the gates to Apple iPhone sales from the world's largest carrier was going to bring in a flood of new business, they might have to think again. China Mobile has started accepting pre-orders for the Apple iPhone 5s and Apple iPhone 5c, and based on analysis by Wedge Partners, the number of units that have been reserved is 100,000. If true, that figure would be lower than pre-orders for both models accepted in September from China Unicom (120,000) and China Telecom (150,000).

What makes the figure seem so low is that China Mobile has 763 million subscribers and certainly you would expect to see more interest in the two new iPhones from such a large customer base. But there are some things to consider, not the least of which is that this is one estimate made after just two days of pre-orders. Also, it isn't like these phones are new to the region. They have been available for more than a couple of months and China Mobile's subsidy is close enough to the other two carriers that it isn't drawing a substantial response from China Mobile subscribers.

Despite the lagging number of pre-orders for both the Apple iPhone 5s and Apple iPhone 5c, analysts still expect China Mobile to sell between 17 million and 38.7 million units of Apple's iconic smartphone in 2014.

source: AllThingsD