On Wednesday, Chinese high-tech giant Lenovo, in partnership with China Mobile, unveiled the OPhone, which they expect will compete with Apple's very popular iPhone.

Huang Xiaoqing, president of China Mobile's Institute of Research, said at a ceremony: "We hope OPhone will take at least 50 percent of China's smartphone market in three to five years.

The OPhone will work on an operating system created by China Mobile, apart from working on the carrier's homegrown TD-SCDMA third-generation wireless technology platform.

President of Lenovo Mobile, Lv Yan, said that though the retail price would differ according to subscription plans with China Mobile, each OPhone handset would cost more than 200 dollars to make.

He said: "OPhone is China Mobile's strategy."

Lenovo expects that by next month, the OPhone will start selling in the world's largest mobile market of more than 700 million subscribers.

The previous month, a multi-year contract was announced by China Unicom to sell the iPhone, starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Unicom at the end of July had 141 million mobile subscribers, and now hopes to draw high-end users with the iPhone to turn around its weak performance in competition with China Mobile, which had almost 498 million subscribers at the end of July.