How much do "Chinese Mobile Users" worth to Mobile Service Providers

Chinese 3G Subscribers 

In the run-up to iPhone 5S/5C launch event, the “cheap” iPhone 5C and its price was a #1 topic of speculation. A close #2 was Apple’s deal with China Mobile. Why were pundits so obsessed about getting iPhone on one Chinese carrier? 

In its latest article, Unwired.com " speaks about the " often over estimated Mobile Market in China .Yes, China Mobile is humongous - it has 740 million subscribers. But most of those subscribers use cheap 2G feature phones and wouldn’t care much about an iPhone. China Mobile’s 3G subscriber base is way smaller – around 180 million. Still a huge number, but majority of those subscribers use cheap $100-200 Androids, and aren’t available to Apple either.

And if you look at the combined base of around 150 million 3G subscribers at current Apple partners – China Telecom and China Unicom, you may wonder what the China Mobile fuss was all about.