China Unicom chairman Chang Xiaobing has confirmed that the official iPhone carrier in China has sold 100,000 iPhones in the first 40 days of sales.

The comment comes after company Wednesday Marbridge Consulting reported that Unicom had sold only 10,000 units. This figure has now been confirmed to have been a typo.

Further on in the interview Xiaobing criticised the media for focussing on the high price of the contract-free 32GB iPhone 3GS which sells for an equivalent value of $1033. The chairman also refers to previous reports that China Unicom purchased 5 million units from Apple which Xiaobing describes as “not entirely accurate”.