“With the iPhone set to arrive in China next Friday, China Unicom has revealed that it has received over 200,000 reservations in just a couple days, doubling its original 100,000 first-day reservations,” Josh Ong reports for TNW.
“The company also announced that it will offer a full subsidy for the handset, with a minimum deposit of $947 (RMB 5,899) for the 16GB version,” Ong reports. “The carrier announced the figures on its official Sina Weibo microblog on Thursday.”
Ong reports, “With 200,000 orders booked through China Unicom alone and many more expected through third-place China Telecom and Apple’s official retail and online sales channels, the iPhone 5 looks set to be another hit in the world’s most populous nation.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
China Unicom racks up 100,000 iPhone 5 preorders in first day – December 4, 2012
The iPhone 5 sold 5,000,000 units the first weekend In the US. If China has never had the iPhone, shouldn’t these numbers be atleast ten times higher?
If other smartphone brands could not come up with the same number of preorders, then technically it’s a success.
Okay, two facts wrong…
iPhone 5 is NOT the first iPhone in China.
IPhone 5 sold 5 million units in over ten MAJOR countries upon initial release.
Correct Michael. People should not sell China short!
That’s ridiculous. I’d heard that no one in China can afford an iPhone. Isn’t that what caused Apple’s share price to drop? Wall Street said Android smartphones will supposedly make up 98% of China’s smartphone sales and put Apple out of the smartphone business with $50 Android smartphones that do everything the iPhone does and more. Of course, 200,000 pre-orders don’t mean very much. Doesn’t Google activate, like, 2,000,000 Android smartphones a day? Besides, Nokia just inked a deal with China Mobile to sell a gazillion Lumias to the low-class masses. There won’t be any consumers left to buy iPhones.
/s
@Laughing_Boy is right. There’s so much to consider here. We’re talking about a country with 1.8 billion people, most of whom can’t afford $400 or $500 for an iPhone. In addition, we’re looking at Chinese competition creating “as good as” knock offs that will sell for tens of dollars, not hundreds of dollars. The iPhone will be a high end status symbol for a few, but not the standard. It will be the gift of choice from wealthy business people to members of the government they need favors from. Heh.
But the local fisherman, he will have some really cheap android device, on a censored network.
There are more and more wealthy coming up in China all the time though, so don’t think this means Apple will do badly.
Chinese New Year is the right messure. There is still almost a month to go. Then the big spending happens. This is btw only China Unicom. There is also China Telecom who has not told their figures and lets not forget the imports from Hong Kong.
The iPhone (the AUTHENTIC iPhone) has been popular with the Chinese since the launch of the original iPhone. There are knockoffs everywhere. Droid, Galaxy and many other wannabes. They will remain wannabes (or less) while the iPhone (and iOS) trample the imposters.