China Unicom recently announced that the company is set to launch it's own-branded Smartphone, dubbed the Uphone, by the end of 2010, in a bid to generate more revenue from its 3G data services, Reuters reported on November 17. The Uphone, to be manufactured by Huawei and ZTE, will be operated based on its own-developed Uniplus OS, the Beijing Morning Post reported on November 19. Further details regarding the price tag and production volume of this phone, however, were not yet disclosed. So far, China Unicom is the only mobile operator selling Apple's iPhone in China. Aside from China Unicom, other leading mobile phone manufacturers also have their own-branded Smartphones so as to tap the burgeoning demand for Smartphones, including China Mobile's Ophone, Lenovo's Lephone, Microsoft's Wphone and Win7 Phone, along with Google's Gphone and Samsung's Sphone.

 

Meanwhile, recently China Unicom and ZTE officially launched a new application store, dubbed WoStore, with applications being divided into six categories including games, tools, entertainment, phone themes, lifestyle and reading. Prior to the official launch, the store had been trial running on China Unicom's website and had up to 2,147 applications available by October 25, 2010, of which 890 are theme-related applications and 751 are reading-related applications. To date, WoStore supports mobile phones under brand-names of Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ZTE, Dopod, and Coolpad, but exclusive of the Apple iPhone. The store presumably will support the Uphone as well. Other than China Unicom's WoStore, other Smartphone applications stores include Apple's App Store, China Mobile's Mobile Market and Microsoft's Shop4Apps.