Spain’s largest Operator, Telefónica announced a strategic collaboration with China Unicom, the second largest Operator in China on a joint smartphone procurement program. The collaboration aims to enable both companies to leverage joint product specifications, industrial trends research and global RFQ negotiations to help them to deliver richer data services to a broader group of customers in China, Latin America and Europe.
The partnership which was initiated in 2014 will enable both Operators to achieve important economies of scale to acquire cost-effective 4G smartphones from leading handset vendors, namely Lenovo and TCL. The collaboration is expected to enable these devices to be delivered to customers in the 2nd half of 2015 in China, Europe and Latin America, and both China Unicom and Telefónica have developed specific consumer propositions and go-to market plans in all countries.
'This important milestone is the first step of future common procurement activities, as we have explored and achieved an innovative way of procurement cooperation between the 2 world-class telecom operators', a statement from Telefónica read.
