iPhone Launches (Officially) in China!
Today’s the day — the iPhone officially launches in China on China Unicom. We say officially because it’s been available unofficially, in gray market form, since the original iPhone 2G was launched, and with winks and nudges via Apple’s unlocked sales in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
So will international sales tumble as the world’s biggest market can buy it at home? Will Chinese sales lag in favor of sticking with the unofficial versions from overseas or future Chinese versions that, you know, include Wi-Fi? Or will iPhone numbers just continue to grow, grow, grow?
Either way, welcome China, to the iPhone world!
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Grow grow grow. Is all it will do. 2nd
Firstly – You guys are just childish! go troll somewhere else.
Secondly (and actually on topic!!!) – Glad to hear our chinese friends can now get hold of them officially, but i cant help thinking the overbearing chinese government will have got some kind of stupid lockdown in there, like no twitter apps or something equallty stupid.
but when will iphone 3gs be launched in india
You left out Brazil and other Latin America countries that already have iPhone for more than a year on your beautiful map!
The price is way too high! They won’t sell any officially – especially not without wifi.
My wife and I both got our iPhones officially(illegally?) in Shanghai.
450€ for 3GS 16GB and 580 € for 3GS 32 GB. How can Unicom beat that? No chance!
if its apple someone will buy it. and they will grow grow grow. another step in the business, good for apple
me love iPhone long time
I don’t know a lot about China, but I do know they have billions of people. However, I also know they get paid next to nothing. So, I’m not sure how many people can afford to buy an iPhone there.
Also, I’m willing to bet that 95% of the iPhones in China will be jailbroken, as I don’t think they will stand for some silly Apple lockdown on a device.
If the China market is anything like the one in Singapore then Apple will do very well. I was in Singapore for 2 weeks earlier in the month. Tons of folks have the iPhone and the only Blackberries I saw were in the hands of visitors at the Marriott on Orchard Road. I’m sure that there are tons of folks in the PRC that have enough to pay for it and the terms of the Unicom plan. Besides, what’s 10 million in sales of a country that has 1.3 Billion people?
Get it right Joe McG, the Chinese government lockdown on the iPhone not Apple. And they will be jailbroke because of the price, the average person doesn’t need to be jailbroken it’s the people that like to explore or just can’t afford it the phone company way.
I love hearing from people that the cell phone industry in Europe and Asia is so far ahead of America, yet I’ve had an iPhone for a couple years now, and other parts of the world are just now getting it.
My local news just said they’re being sold for $1,000.
The official phones lack wifi and cost more than the unofficial grey market phones.
CBNC has a story that Unicom officials stated the wifi ban has been or will be lifted and they expect to have wifi in their next big shipment from apple.
I’d post a link or you could download the CNBC Real Time app and read it yourself. It’s a great app.
@rob (12): I think the issue is that the infrastructure is better, meaning things like the AT&T “more bars in more places” stuff is moot because coverage is significantly better. Or maybe not. I honestly don’t know, not being European.
The fact that the iPhone isn’t somewhere has more to do with Apple not setting up agreements with carriers than it does the ‘advanced-ness’ of the infrastructure. GSM and 3G (WCDMA/HSPA) have been in Europe well before in the United States.
Here is the link to the CNBC story claiming wifi will come to China iPhones :
http://mobile.cnbc.com/cnews/AAPL/33549049
“by the end of the year”
PC World (and a few blogs) are reporting a slower-than-expected launch. Whether this is because grey market phones are cheaper and have WiFi, because of the rain in Beijing, or because Chinese consumers are just not keen on the iPhone itself, remains to be seen. Even in the latter case, a relatively low adoption rate in the largest country in the world can still translate into a huge absolute number of handsets sold.
(tinyurl’d pcworld article) http://tinyurl.com/ykvf39l
In a market as big as China as a whole. Even selling 2% of the market would double total iPhone sales to date.
19th. Do I win a prize?
Last
@Rob and @thekevinmonster:
Quote TKM”
This is very true.
In North America, the cell industry got started and was more heavily adopted way earlier than in Europe.
But because of this North America got saddled EARLY technology (Analog).
Europe never did deploy analog on any significant scale, because by the time cell phones were ramping up over there it was already clear that Analog was going no where. Not enough band width, virtually no features, and power hungry as hell.
Most EU countries built straight into GSM.
In North America, we hadn’t even paid off the Analog build out when it was decided that a major DO-Over was needed, so they rebuilt the entire system in CDMA and GSM.
But because Analog had such great range, there were fewer tower, and the rebuild entailed adding tons and tons of towers, not just hanging new transmitters on existing towers as can be done in Europe.
So EU got GSM and then UMTS way sooner the NA, and the tower density didn’t have to be amped up, except in urban areas, because it started with adequate towers.
This is just one reason cell costs are so high in NA compared to EU. North America made an expensive false start with the wrong technology (it was the only tech available at the time).
CJ, how poor is “poor”?
i earn 3500RMB a month let’s say you make 3500 dollars a month so the number is the same last month i spent 4750RMBto buy an Iphone3gs from HongKong would you spend that much (4000 dollars) on it? there are more than 1 million iphones in China do you still think we are poor?
Jason, you spend over a month’s earning to buy an iPhone? Wow! That is exspensive.
“I earn 3500RMB a month… spent 4750RMBto buy an Iphone3gs”
IDK about china. Anyone who has ever been will know the chinese take great pride in the KIRF market. Lived there as an exchange student last year, knock-off phones were cooler than non-knock-off.
Something about sticking it to the man, and chinese manufactured pride. It is like when people buy “made in u.s.” even if it is inferior to made in china