So anybody that wants to buy one, has to be approved by the government? How does the process go in China?
it's actually much easier to buy it in China, basically most people just use prepaid phones, no schemes so complex as in US, of course you always have the option to get a contract, and the bill is about 1/4 as in the States, the coverage is better than any of the US carriers because China only have two carriers. And it's national, that's village-level national. Sometimes I just like how the capitalism works in china, it's better than the US in some aspect. But then again, China just distribute power by wealth, and most of the wealth is taken by the government.
also, the china union always uses their CDMA network, so there is already a CDMA iphone in the world-why people speculate that's so hard to make? Since apple is also selling unlocked phone in their store, and it's not so much more expensive than their china union ones, this iphone is also compatible with China Mobile's GSM cell network, except not compatible with their 3G network, so you have to get a China Union number to use the 3G WCDMA network-according to another blog from China.
The bigger news here is that apple is opening up two new stores in China, confirming their plan of open up 25 stores by the end of 2011 fiscal year. macrumors is saving that up for another post?
And here is a hint is how rich Chinese consume: they just update their phone once a year to whatever the most fancy phone there is-not minding if the phone runs apps or not, maybe it's just like the States.