Will iPhone 4S Buyers Choose China Telecom or China Unicom?

Now that the iPhone 4S is coming to China Telecom (HKG:728, NYSE:CHA), Chinese iPhone users finally have a choice. Do they stick with China Unicom (HKG:762, NYSE:CHU), previously the only official option for the iPhone, or switch to Telecom? Or just forgo 3G service altogether and shove a China Mobile SIM card in instead?

Sina Tech put together a comparison of the plans which might be interesting if you’re actually trying to buy one of these phones in China, but they also are conducting a user poll about what they think of Telecom’s plan offerings and which version of the iPhone 4S they would prefer. The results so far are pretty interesting:

What do you think of China Telecom’s 3G plans?

If you were going to buy an iPhone 4S, which version would you buy?

So Sina’s readers — 23,000+ of them, at least — prefer Telecom to Unicom, but would rather not buy a 3G plan from either of them (in practice, this generally means they’ll use the phone with a China Mobile number and no 3g). That’s interesting, and it appears to be pretty reflective of the general mood, at least on the internet. To verify, we checked out two other polls on Sina Weibo with thousands of voters, and China Telecom was chosen above China Unicom in both of them.

It’s worth noting that the reason for these votes isn’t just the pricing, which actually seems pretty similar between Telecom and Unicom. There is a general perception that China Telecom’s 3G coverage is better than Unicom’s, and that definitely played a role in some of the votes in the Sina Weibo polls.

Of course, China’s iPhone users will ultimately vote with their wallets, so we’ll have to wait and see how the Telecom version sells once it’s actually on the shelves. But if these polls are any indication, China Unicom could be facing some pretty stiff competition.