China Unicom: good growth prospects and perhaps the iPhone

China Unicom said the company is targeting subscriber growth of 20 million to 30 million within a year. To put that into context, Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile phone carrier in the U.S., had 72.1 million subscribers at the end of last year.

China Unicom has 21% market share in China.

It recently announced it may partner with Apple to offer the iPhone, which has so far been unavailable in China. China Unicom uses 3G WCDMA technology, a mobile voice and data network for both the iPhone and other platforms.

China’s wireless market had just 52 million subscribers in 2000. That figure now approaches 500 million and wireless penetration is expected to reach 71% in 2012. That would be 71% of over 1.3 billion people, China’s current population.

Seeking Alpha suggests that with such massive growth prospects, China Unicom has the potential to be very rewarding.