Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom to launch new iPhone 3Gs

Jul. 3, 2009 (China Knowledge) - Chunghwa Telecom Co, the biggest telecom operator in Taiwan, said on Wednesday that it will begin selling Apple Inc's latest iPhone 3Gs in August to meet local consumers' rising demand for handsets with mobile Internet, the Taipei Times reported.

The price of the new iPhone will be NT$29,900, and the company expects the new iPhone to sell faster than the previous model.

iPhone users download more from the Internet than users of other handsets, said Lin Jen-Hon, an executive vice president at Chunghwa Telecom. In addition, the average revenue per user (ARPU) from its iPhone users was NT$1,500, 25% higher than the ARPU of NT$1,200 from users of handsets made by HTC Corp and Nokia Corp.

Chunghwa Telecom and HTC Corp last month launched the HTC Magic smartphone, HTC's second Android phone, in Taiwan.

Chunghwa Telecom this year plans to buy 320,000 smartphones, which will account for 16% of its total planned handset purchase volume.