BEIJING—China Unicom welcomed 439,000 subscribers on its new CDMA network last year, while the number of its GSM customers rose by 1.07 million to 28.1 million. Many of the CDMA customers were migrating from an existing network run by Great Wall Communications and do not reflect real demand for the new CDMA service.
Brokerage UBS Warburg said it believes China Unicom will have to cut CDMA tariffs to attract customers. It slashed its projection of China Unicom’s net profit by 20 percent to CNY4 billion (US$483 million) and lowered its revenue forecast by 8 percent to CNY37.18 billion (US$4.49 billion).
China is still experiencing a shortage of CDMA-handsets.
