Apple iPhone poised for China touchdown
1.3 billion to be served
It appears that Apple's plan to introduce its iPhone to 1.3 billion potential Chinese customers may have taken one more step towards reality.
According to ChinaTechNews.com, China Unicom "reportedly" reached an agreement with Apple that would bring the über-successful smartphone to the world's most populous market as soon as May of this year.
This latest rumor is one in a long series of informed speculation concerning Apple's Chinese plans. One analyst, for example, conjectured that Apple would resurrect its original GPS-free iPhone in order to please a security-conscious Chinese government.
Another theory is that the ChiPhone will be the oft-scuttlebutted iPhone Nano, a smaller-screen version of the current model.
If true, China Unicom's success in its iPhone negotiations with Apple would be a blow to China Mobile, whose talks with Apple regarding their handling of Chinese iPhone service reportedly broke down over a year ago.
But the China Unicom deal makes sense - if only because China Mobile has been granted the uniquely Chinese TD-SCDMA standard in the three-way 3G contract distribution recently announced by the Chinese government.
In that three-provider deal, China Telecom was awarded the contract for Qualcomm’s not-terribly-widespread CDMA-2000 standard, and China Unicom was grated the rights to WCDMA.
The iPhone supports WCDMA. China Unicom is a WCDMA provider.
ChinaTechNews.com's rumor makes sense. ®
COMMENTS
sino iphone
I too lived in hong kong for years and though i cannot confirm the Sino iphone comments by another AC. I would say that that is probably accurate. I once had a gameboy cartridge which had 200 different full games on it - 60% of which had not even been released - as a result i think some were a little buggy, many were also crap but it cost me the princely sum of about 20 quid. i don't doubt that there are some little shops wacking out iphone clones with a picture of an orange on them for a 1/10th of the price with all of the features... My first computer was an apple2+ copy with a sticker of a banana on it
@ AC: Sino Iphone
You expect me to believe there is a magical place where there are electronics products not available in Europe or the US that cost 1/10th the price and work better and have more features? And this is the same place that feels EVD, HD VMD, NVD, and CHBD are the answer(s) to Blu-Ray?
Pull the other one.
You got me an apple...
.. I ordered Chinese!!! I really, really doubt if iphone would be a success in China.
Paris, coz how do like'em apples ?
Sino Iphone?
Sigh... ok here's the reality, and I have lived in HK for years.
Here you can buy a jailbroken Iphone, a Google phone, a Samsung Omnia etc etc
Here if you screw up your Iphone from Itunes or whatever you go back to the same shop (or one of a hundred other shops) and pay to get it re-jailbroken.
Why? I dunno. Here you can buy phones which look smell touch and feel as Iphones but are 10 per cent of the price cos they are made in China. Are they gonna break? Who gives a shit - you can buy 9 of them and still be ahead.
I suspect Apple does not give a shit about sales of the Iphone because they can lock in a goodly number of Apps downloaded. "goodly number" = thousands
Now a dose of reality. PRC punters do not give a shit about the Iphone. Last time I sat in Shenzhen with my mate he showed me his phone which does everything my 10 times as expensive Iphone does, probably more, and is lighter to boot. And to repeat, if it breaks so what? Buy another one!
Why is he not gob-smacked by the latest Iphone, Nokia, SOny-Ericsson whatever??
Because - PAY ATTENTION - there are hundreds if not thousands of small mobile phone tech shops in Shenzhen which crack the latest "must have" feature from Finland within days or even hours. Within days or hours their cousins in the factory next door are mass producing Nokia-busters.
Geddit?
Not in China?
I have been in Beijing in the last two weeks and I saw so many iphones I assumed they were already on sale. You can certainly buy all the accessories over the counter in the main electrical shops. You can probably also buy an iphone in the Silk Alley, but I would not recommend it. Last person I know who bought an "igadget" there is now the proud owner of a nano which only plays the preloaded .wav files and has the laudable capcity of 10mb. Looks nice though!
