Apple still has fans, including Xia Bingyi, a 26-year-old customer from the eastern Chinese city of Jinan. She was one of 10 people who won a trip to Beijing to buy an iPhone on the opening day of China Mobile’s offering. Ms. Xia already owned an iPhone 4 she bought two years ago, but said she did not hesitate to sign up for a new iPhone 5S once China Mobile began offering it.

“This is like manna from heaven!” she said.

Among consumers who have to pay their own way, however, price has been a big barrier to bringing the iPhone to a broader audience in China. The list price of 5,288 renminbi (about $870) an iPhone in China is more than many people’s monthly salary, especially outside the major cities.

China Mobile has been less aggressive on pricing and subsidies than some analysts had expected. To get the iPhone 5S free of charge, subscribers must commit to a two-year contract at 588 renminbi a month.

China Unicom and China Telecom, which together have about 450 million customers, have cut the price of their competing iPhone packages only modestly since China Mobile announced its Apple agreement in December.

“There won’t be a subsidy war among the three operators because they have already learned that they need to control this,” said Jun Zhang, an analyst at Wedge Partners, an equity research firm.

On Sina Weibo, a microblogging service, some users complained about the pricing of the iPhone 5S by China Mobile, saying they could get smuggled versions from Hong Kong for less money.

“The model is the same,” one contributor wrote on Weibo. “I want the cheaper one.”

Before the deal with Apple, China Mobile said 45 million people were using iPhones on its network, most of them acquired from Hong Kong or via other unofficial channels. This accounts for more than 60 percent of the iPhones in use in China, according to Craig Yu, research director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a research firm.