3G Smart phones in China: 1M growth a month?

I was reading this article on the wall street journal this morning.


China Unicom Targets Strong 3G Growth

HONG KONG--China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., which started offering Apple Inc.'s iPhone in China last week, aims to increase the number of its third-generation mobile users by more than 1 million a month, Chairman Chang Xiaobing said Tuesday.

The company launched 3G services in China Oct. 1 and had more than 1 million subscribers to the mobile technology standard at the end of that month, Mr. Chang said.

He said China Unicom has signed up more than 5,000 iPhone users in China since it launched the phone there Friday and it expects the Apple phone to boost its average revenue per user.

What really stands out is there was already 1 million + 3G phones in china just waiting for the technology to be supported. Only 5000 of these so far are officially distributed iPhones? With the price of unlocked grey market iPhones being so much less of what the officially distributed iPhones are how can Unicom hope to compete?

Unicom hopes to grow the 3G market by 1 million a month? This is pretty impressive of a goal given that it would most likely have to include both selling a 3G phone and plan. Rather than just the 3G plan to existing 3G phone customers.

Technolgy Media Misinformation

Recently I've been seeing alot of misinformation in the media. I'm not sure why the misinformation machine is gaining more and more steam in the tech sector. Traditionally you had rumors, and reality. Sometimes they were the same, but most often not. The rumors were published as rumors and they were taken with a "that would be nice" or "wtf are they thinking?" grain of salt.

Now it seems that rumors/lies are being published as fact. Misleading headlines on credible websites, or just 100% misleading articles with headlines true to their misleading nature.

In the news today
The best example today is from the PC World website:
iPhone as an eBook Reader Threatens Kindle, Says Report (Nov 2, 2009 8:19 am)
&
iPhone e-Books Don't Threaten Kindle Or Nook ( Nov 2, 2009 9:24 am)

The points to note is both of these posts are blogs and both made a front page spot on googles tech news today at different times.

Where is this coming from?

I'd go so far as to say that misinformation is being used right now more than ever in US politics to discredit the current presidents politics (but I'm young so maybe I'm wrong) . This makes me question - does the average tech blogger think that if the politicians are doing it than its fine for them to do so too? After all for a lot of people I would guess politicians in positions of power are role models.

The biggest problem I think with misinformation on the internet is that it becomes viral. And with unsteady economic markets, as a lie/rumor becomes syndicated across lots of credible sources, mislead readers/investors to their doom! Which I would guess may lead to an even more sensitive economic market.