Sep 14, China Telecom Corp. Ltd. (0728.HK, NYSE:CHA), China’s second-largest mobile operator by users, will be the first mobile company to offer Apple Inc.’s iPhone 5 in China, the Southern Metropolitan Daily reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed source.

The China Telecom source said some of the company’s provincial branches have received notification from head office to begin preparing for the sale of the iPhone 5, and that they can start taking orders from late September. Sales are expected to officially start in October.

According to the report, China Telecom overtook U.S. telecoms firm Verizon Communications Inc. as the world’s largest CDMA operator, with 108 million subscribers in the first half of 2011.

“China Telecom so far has around 13 million to 15 million high-end subscribers, with the potential to generate up to $8 billion to $9 billion in revenue for the company,” an industry analyst said.

The company may sell a total of 1.06 million iPhone products by the end of this year, the analyst said.

China Telecom is preparing to invest up to RMB 1.5 billion marketing the iPhone 5 under a plan called the “Dragon Plan,” the source said, underscoring the high hopes the mobile operator is placing on Apple’s hotly anticipated new product.

Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd. (TPE:2354), which makes the iPhone 5 and other similar products for Apple, has already ramped up its daily output of the phone to 150,000 units, and could produce as many as 22 million units in the fourth quarter of this year, an industry insider was cited as saying.

Source:Jin ZHANG