China Unicom profits fell 54 percent in the second quarter, in spite of benefits from being the only official iPhone carrier in China, Bloomberg notes. The drop is attributed partly to discounts on phones, but mostly to marketing costs, which exceeded estimates. Unicom nevertheless attracted only 4.88 million subscribers in the quarter, as compared to China Mobile's 15.2 million. Mobile also continued to dwarf Unicom in overall subscribers, with 554 million versus 157 million.
