Apple Progressing Toward iPhone Release in China?

[macshill]

What is your proposed solution to the problem?

If Apple doesn't follow Chinese law, then they don't get to sell phones there.
If they do follow the law, they can sell the phones.

Those are the only two options. Where, then, do they make a difference for the freedom of Chinese? At least they can provide the best possible communication device, and hopefully Chinese citizens can use that to alter their autocratic government. You can't impose democracy on a country, it has to happen from within.

This is a technology website, not a political or international affairs website. Please take your melodrama (and yes, it IS melodrama) elsewhere.

How did you feel a couple months ago when there a flap about Google perhaps bowing to the Chinese gov. to get access to the market? If you say they should have stayed their ground but give Apple a free pass, is someone talking out both sides of their... mouth.

Talking about the politics of it all is most certainly a worthy discussion here since we know WHY they're not allowing wi-fi.

 

[iphones4evry1]

This probably explains why Apple's stock was up $4.61 today. China is a huge market.

 

[twoodcc]

apple really needs to get the iphone in china. i hope to see this by early next year

 

[Ping Guo]

Hate to rain on the parade but...

The market here is being way overblown. A market of 1.3 billion assumes that these "consumers" would be able to afford an iPhone. Most of them can't, because they're poor farmers or migrant workers. China's per capita GDP is $5,963/year according to the IMF, lagging behind such economic juggernauts as Angola, Namibia, Ukraine, and El Savador.

The second point is that there are already an estimated 2 million imported iPhones being used by affluent Chinese. You can easily find factory unlocked HK models and SIM unlocked American phones in electronic "grey" markets all over Shanghai.

With the additional advertising and official carriers, sure they will sell more, but consumers here are savvy enough to know that ripping out the wifi is a raw deal. I predict that grey market imports with wifi will continue to sell well, among the well-off urban Chinese who are able to afford an $800 phone.

The Myth of the Chinese Market has been around since the days of tall ships and mercantilism.

 

[jsdmorrison]

I don't know about the significance of this, but I'm in China right now, before the 3.0 update the China Mobile carrier logo on my iphone was just written in English, no matter what the language settings on the phone was.

After the 3.0 update the carrier logo was displayed in Chinese Characters, regardless of region settings.

 

[enetor]

Yeah I agree with you.
There's just one thing to point out: the HK models of iPhone can be used directly in the new WCDMA network of China Unicom. No additional procedures are needed.

The market here is being way overblown. A market of 1.3 billion assumes that these "consumers" would be able to afford an iPhone. Most of them can't, because they're poor farmers or migrant workers. China's per capita GDP is $5,963/year according to the IMF, lagging behind such economic juggernauts as Angola, Namibia, Ukraine, and El Savador.

The second point is that there are already an estimated 2 million imported iPhones being used by affluent Chinese. You can easily find factory unlocked HK models and SIM unlocked American phones in electronic "grey" markets all over Shanghai.

With the additional advertising and official carriers, sure they will sell more, but consumers here are savvy enough to know that ripping out the wifi is a raw deal. I predict that grey market imports with wifi will continue to sell well, among the well-off urban Chinese who are able to afford an $800 phone.

The Myth of the Chinese Market has been around since the days of tall ships and mercantilism.