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China Unicom Reports Only 5,000 New iPhone Users Since Launch

Mattie Num Nums said:
Ah but thats where you are wrong. I am a Double E. You're not much for the real world are yah. You do realize that Apple uses its outside sources to "engineer" there ideas. If it wasn't for companies like Foxconn, TXC, Delta, Larger Precision, Altus-Tech, and many other Chinese and Taiwanese companies, the iPhone would be just an idea. Someone has to put all those ideas together, and its not happening in the US thats for sure. Oh some more food for thought, most of those companies also work with HP, Dell, and Others. Hope you enjoy that Apple Tax.



Did I imply or say that all of their engineering was done in China? No.
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You just stated Apple's engineering has been done in China for years and the only thing being done in California is design. To me this means that there is no engineering work being done in California.

Mattie Num Nums said:
I never said Apple does NO engineering work. That is you saying that.
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Dude this is what I quoted from you:

"Good ole China has been producing, making, and engineering Apple technology for years now. Designed in California means just that, and thats about it."

In what way are you giving Apple any credit for any engineering work being done?
 
kockgunner said:
What's this talk about there being an Wifi enabled iPhone in China soon? Is it true? I've never heard of that.
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"The first shipments manufactured for China Unicom, however, are missing wi-fi. It wasn't until May, after manufacturing of the device had begun, that Beijing lifted the existing wi-fi ban on devices."
Source

"The gray market of around 2 million iPhones is possibly the biggest competitor to the official model. All of those imported units have Wi-Fi, too, unlike the iPhones currently being sold by China Unicom due to government restrictions. However, the ban on Wi-Fi has been lifted, so future iPhones in China will have Wi-Fi."
Source

"However, the WiFi ban was lifted soon after the production began, and the next batch of iPhones that come to the market might actually have the functionality enabled. A Unicom spokesman, Yi Difei, is an optimist. “We are talking with Apple and expect the problem to be solved by the end of this year,” he said."
Source

Google China Unicom WiFi ban lifted for more.
 
Goona said:
Dude this is what I quoted from you:

"Good ole China has been producing, making, and engineering Apple technology for years now. Designed in California means just that, and thats about it."

In what way are you giving Apple any credit for any engineering work being done?
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You're not helping your point out much.
 
Goona said:
Dude this is what I quoted from you:

"Good ole China has been producing, making, and engineering Apple technology for years now. Designed in California means just that, and thats about it."

In what way are you giving Apple any credit for any engineering work being done?
Click to expand...

Let's not try to reframe your position. It appears neither you are giving the opposing party enough credit.

You didnt know a fair amount of engineering took place in China, "The Chinese are doing engineering for Apple? " and Mattie isn't being transparent about how much design and engineering takes place here as well.
 
I'm in Beijing on business right now. I happened to arrive on release day.

I can say that at least among my Chinese employees here (who could certainly afford it), they simply do not want to pay the high price for the phone when you can get a grey market model for less. They all think the iPhone is awesome, but not awesome enough for what they're asking.

But also, they're happy with the phones they already have. Asia has always had much nicer phones than American offerings. The iPhone is really the first American phone to seriously compete with Asian competition. This concept of a great American phone is new to them. :)
 
same issue as in Russia.
Official offering is not as good as what many "unlockers" were selling for a while. Too expensive, too restrictive and with a lot of upfront investment with very few obvious benefits.
Also they are very late. Most of the people who really wanted and could afford an iPhone did not want to wait that long.
 
seedster2 said:
Let's not try to reframe your position. It appears neither you are giving the opposing party enough credit.

You didnt know a fair amount of engineering took place in China, "The Chinese are doing engineering for Apple? " and Mattie isn't being transparent about how much design and engineering takes place here as well.
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Right but I asked a question and didn't make it seems like a fact like he implied.
 
Goona said:
Right but I asked a question and didn't make it seems like a fact like he implied.
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Take it for what it is. I was taking a sarcastic jab at Apples "Designed in California" slogan on all their boxes. A bulk of Apples work is now done overseas. Welcome to a new manufacturing millennium.
 
*LTD* said:
Think about what you just said, where the iPhone is being sold (and in what condition), and what we enjoy on our iPhones in Europe and North America.

Apple only wanted $600 for the unit. They didn't ask for $1000. Apple didn't want to remove wifi. This is Unicom's doing. Negotiations took forever, and Unicom managed to almost completely pull the rug out from under the iPhone.

Only in China.
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For once I agree with you.
Apple has nothing to do with the poor sales.
Crippled phones mandated by the Chinese government and high price points set by Unicom are what is killing it.
 
I will bet for 1 cent that UNICOM will drop iPhone's price as time goes by.

We will soon see the cheapest non-contracted phone in the world.

However, if Unicom does not do that,

Unicom-iPhone will fail for sure, yeah I bet 1 cent for that too

the whole thing is so funny.
 
guzhogi said:
I personally prefer Flinstones style cars.

I agree, 5000 does sound low, especially considering the population of China. I'll admit, I'm no expert on China, but I've heard that an iPhone would cost more than 3 months' pay for a good sized portion of the population. Forgot where I heard it & don't even know how accurate it is. Plus, when you add in the lack of Wi-Fi, when China (or whomever there) loosened the ban.
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More like a years pay,I have been many times in Asia,in fact I live in Indonesia and the average wage is more or less like $ 40 a month:eek:
 
reverie said:
Can't stop laughing! :-D Just four months ago many people here were hell-bent on believing that, within 12 months, 5 million iPhones could be sold in China. Now China Unicom will be lucky to achieve 2-5 % of that purported goal. Oh delicious claim chowder!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/764864/
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Within 12 months, 5 million iPhones could be sold in China. Considering that it has only been on sale for 5 days, I'm not sure what you think is so funny.
 
They should just pull out of china. Compters, phones, software, everything. Let them create their own technology to support their communist utopia. What were we thinking when we sold them all those treasury bonds anyway?..oh wait, we weren't.
 
zombitronic said:
Within 12 months, 5 million iPhones could be sold in China. Considering that it has only been on sale for 5 days
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If sales were to remain steady, they would be able to sell 365.000 units in one year...

I'm not sure what you think is so funny.
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What I find funny is that people are ready to believe any kind of rumor and come up with long-winded rationalisations.
 
rjohnstone said:
For once I agree with you.
Apple has nothing to do with the poor sales.
Crippled phones mandated by the Chinese government and high price points set by Unicom are what is killing it.
Click to expand...

of course it has. as pointed out above, asia, as well as pretty much the world outside the north america, has enjoyed large variety of nice phones well before iphone, and iphone just haven't been such a great success outside the us, especially in the emerging markets, russia, india and now china, the sales have been disappointing.
 
*LTD* said:
Think about what you just said, where the iPhone is being sold (and in what condition), and what we enjoy on our iPhones in Europe and North America.

Apple only wanted $600 for the unit. They didn't ask for $1000. Apple didn't want to remove wifi. This is Unicom's doing. Negotiations took forever, and Unicom managed to almost completely pull the rug out from under the iPhone.

Only in China.
Click to expand...

no, the iphone isnt that great to begin with, obviously you people have jumped on the "Jesus phone" bandwagon and will never understand the iphone is 3 years behind in technology

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/

the iphone came out in 2007 and it didn't eve have 3G, WTF is that? UMTS has been out since 2001.

also it was more expensive than almost every phone out there at the time, even the HTC Universal with 3G video conferencing came out in 2005 and was free with an 18m contract at the time of the iphone ver1's release.

This guy got it right
P-Worm said:
Does anyone know how the iPhone has faired in Japan? I have my doubts that the iPhone will do that well in China.

P-Worm
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https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8274558/
 
star-fish said:
You don't have enough space, enough resources, enough people willing to do unskilled manual labour for low wages, enough oil or enough money to fund it from the start (particularly to be within environmental needs). You'll be paying far, far more than 20% more, especially when you take into account potential pollution levels.

It's also a step backwards. What next, give up on manfacturing and insist everyone becomes a farmer?
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That bold part sums it up.

We have people willing to do unskilled manual labor.

We just don't have people willing to be engaged in what really amounts to a form of indentured servitude.

We have things like unions, and individual and worker's rights, the latter of which I still find quite ironic that China, a nation supposedly built upon communist ideals, doesn't really have at all.

Workers of the world unite...except in China, where doing so will force you to be "quieted" by the "communist" government.
 
pr5owner said:
no, the iphone isnt that great to begin with, obviously you people have jumped on the "Jesus phone" bandwagon and will never understand the iphone is 3 years behind in technology

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/


https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8274558/
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Eh...I take the JP market with a HUGE grain of salt as concerns sales of products under US company branding.

Remember this is the same nation that has overlooked the XBox 360 even though, up until very recently, it was BY FAR a better overall video game home console product than Playstation 3...at a much lower cost, at that.

Cultural opposition is a bigger factor than most are willing to acknowledge in the JP market.

Oh, and probably the biggest thing against iPhone over there were lack of certain things more conducive to the JP consumer that the rest of us around the world don't give a rat's ass about (like the electronic pay system tied to phones over there, etc.).
 
pr5owner said:
no, the iphone isnt that great to begin with,
Click to expand...

Except that it is.

Satisfaction:

http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/iPhone_Satisfaction_Off_The_Charts/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/?p=523

http://www.macworld.com/article/143209/2009/10/jdpower_iphone.html

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/10/iphone-tops-personal-business-satisfaction-rankings.ars

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/14/iphone-vs-pre-satisfaction-bakeoff/

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...one_3gs_has_99_percent_satisfaction_rate.html

Sales/marketshare:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10245339-37.html

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/13/iphone-market-share-grew-375-in-q2/

Against RIM and Pre:

http://www.nytimes.com/external/rea...l-soon-overtake-rim-in-consumer-sm-98992.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/henr...te-apples-eating-everyone-elses-lunch-2009-10

http://scobleizer.com/2009/10/25/85000-reasons-why-apples-iphone-isnt-going-to-be-disrupted/

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/22858/

http://www.cnbc.com/id/33549870/site/14081545

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?threadid=104222

Your link:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/

In July August the iPhone was #1 in Japan.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/17/apples-iphone-3gs-is-no-1-in-japan/

http://mashable.com/2009/07/04/iphone-japan/

And this apparently blows away your half-hearted, out-of-date link:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/28/japanese_hate_for_iphone_all_a_big_mistake.html


You might want to check your denial at the door. Not only is the iPhone *still* a revolutionary product (in continuous development) that is in ridiculous demand, it's about to overtake RIM.

And all of this in not much more than two years. Completely changed the game.

China has always been an oddball market. Especially for iPods and Macs.

UPDATE:

Here's the latest:

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.p...ecord_high_takes_18_share_of_worldwide_smart/

Enjoy.
 
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