Apple close to deal with China Mobile

Even though there was a strong showing from the Apple inc. share price, which printed a new high I will let you know, this on the news that Apple is close to a deal with the biggest mobile carrier on the planet, China Mobile. Holy smokes. Imagine that, being able to distribute across the entire base of China Mobile. I am pretty sure that this is not a match made in heaven, and there must be a whole lot of concessions on the part of Apple in order to crack that market, something that they might not be too keen on. At last check the subscriber base of China Mobile was 600 million plus strong. Wow. Check out the WSJ article: Apple Eyes Bigger Slice of Chinese Market.

China as a whole has nearly 900 million subscribers, which as this Reuters article, Exclusive: China Telecom plans iPhone launch year-end, points out, is more than the entire population of Europe. BUT, as the WSJ article above points out, the idea of owning an iPad or iPhone 4 is beyond most Chinese consumers. Both products cost 5999 yuan, whilst average household income in China is double that. I can understand buying a car to change your life and financing that, but that seems out of the question for most families. But there are loads of newly wealthy families around.

The Apple stock closed at 373.80 Dollars a share, up nearly two and a half percent on the day. Just off the intraday high (and all time high) of 374.65 Dollars a share. Market cap now of 344 billion US Dollars. Still a way to go to catch Exxon Mobil at 409 billion Dollars. After hours the stock is up above 375 dollars a share, why you might ask? Well, simple really, Apple have results today!!! Expectations for Q3 are for 568 US cents per share. That means that the trailing EPS is just short of 18. And forward the expectations tee the stock up to be 14.4 times earnings, at current levels. And for the record, no dividend.