Sunday, May 17, 2009 – World Telecom Day – China Unicom will unveil their new WCDMA 3G network (trial launch in 55 major cities) on May 17 and may want to add some icing on the cake by announcing their new iPhone deal with Apple.
It’s not a given that an announcement will happen in May as Apple may prefer to combine the new iPhone 3.0 unveiling with the “China deal” announcements. It is one thing to announce a deal, and another to actually launch. Given production, distribution and other corporate logistics, it is iPhonAsia’s view that there will be no iPhone launch in China before July 1. It is more probable that a formal launch won’t happen until mid to late summer 2009.
Monday, June 8 – World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) Keynote. The WWDC Keynote is a logical venue for the iPhone 3.0 debut along with a special iPhone in China deal announcement.