“Want to buy an iPhone in Beijing? Talk to Liu Yong. Apple’s wonder isn’t legally available in China, but Liu, who operates an electronics shop in the Zhongguancun neighborhood close to the capital’s premier universities, has plenty of inventory and is more than happy to sell you one for about $680,” Bruce Einhorn and Chi-Chu Tschang report for BusinessWeek.
“Don’t worry that Apple hasn’t authorized any Chinese cellular operator to serve the iPhone; the software in Liu’s iPhones is hacked to enable you to use the phone locally. Inputting Chinese characters on the iPhone’s touch-screen is no problem either, he says. But buy now, he warns, because prices are heading upward as demand for the world’s coolest phone is increasing,” Einhorn and Tschang report.
“With more than 160 million Chinese surfing the Internet, it’s easy for people to follow the latest trends in the U.S. Moreover, many upscale Chinese regularly upgrade their phones to the latest high-end model. And there’s now nothing more high-end than Steve Jobs’ creation. ‘There is a real pent-up demand for the iPhone,’ says Shaun Rein, marketing manager at China Market Research Group in Shanghai. ‘The iPhone is considered by many Chinese to be the best phone out there,'” Einhorn and Tschang report.
“The challenge for Apple is how to capitalize on that popularity. Seduced by the lure of 1.3 billion potential customers, other Western tech companies have been focusing on China for years. China, after all, is already the world’s largest cellular market, with 528 million mobile users. It’s the No. 2 PC market, behind only the U.S.,” Einhorn and Tschang report.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike in Helsinki” for the heads up.]
Iphones illegal in China!? But they are (almost) producted in China..!
“nothing more high-end than Steve Jobs’ creation”
It should be “nothing more high-end than Steve Jobs’s creation”, as Jobs is not a plural possessive.
I guess I better buy AAPL before they get a China deal through.
Isn’t the Politburo Standing Committee just another way to say China Cabinet?
Actually, the additional “s” is optional, depending upon the SOUND of the word once the possessive is added. Try making a possessive out of the plural word “princesses,” OK? It’s ALMOST unmanageable as a spoken word! Consequently, most speakers and writers use “princesses'” as the plural possessive. OK?
@Botvinnik,
No one fucking cares about your asinine grammer nazisms’s’
By the way, @MDN, does anyone in China let things like “legal” anything stand in their way?
@Botninnik
Wrong! Names ending in an “s” get the apostrophe added afterwards.
Go Chiina!
I used to live in the neighborhood of Zhongguancun and I had the only Mac SE around!
It’s available in Denmark as well.. 1199 $, unlocked, but apple is slapping the reseller, demanding a complete recall and handover of all the proceeds..
will Apple slap the Chinese as well?
ou est zune tang ?
You have to wonder how many iPhones don’t make it onto the boat out of China in the first place.
“But they are (almost) producted in China..!”
And that’s why in 2 years you’ll see a real iPhone tagged with the name of another chinese company. And I am not talking about the crappy Meizu, but a real iPhone, with the same design, parts, capabilities and functionalities, with simply a different company name on it.
Don’t believe me? Well, take a look at this knock-off BMW from China. A real X5 SUV… the only difference is the name: It’s called a SCEO http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1887840/posts
Chinese are already building your stuff. They’ll just tag it a different name. Beware Apple !!!
@Eric
I care about. I also care about people wallowing in ignorance and flaunting it in the most vulgar manner.
By the way, the word is spelled grammar. Not that it would matter to your impenetrable intractability.
Since when has China paid attention to anything like licensing? And it is ironic since the things are made there…
Yeah, I’ve been approached by chinese state-owned enterprises and asked to bring in US hi-tech products from GPS to ECG machines starting in the late 80s, which I reported to the US consulate office there. Lack of respect for intellectual property is ubiquitous.
Exactly under what LAW is it illegal to use an iPhone in China? The article isn’t talking about ‘clone’ iPhones, but iPhones purchased in countries where Apple sells them, and used and/or resold in China. What law makes this illegal and are you sure the devices are covered by any US law once they leave the US?
China is a great place to get anything copied, and Taiwan has the best combination of materials/manufacturing/value for high-tech production of anyplace on earth, but the world’s truly desirable mechanical or electronic devices are still designed by people from outside of the region.
I find it interesting the way the differing national and corporate cultures can lead to such disparate viewpoints on a wide variety of issues. Some concentrate on making things that provide functional or aesthetic improvements, while others concentrate on replicating the work of others but making the manufacturing and/or distribution more cost-effective.
Unfortunately, it is not often the one who develops the better mousetrap who reaps the greatest financial benefits. That would be the one who churns out the cheaper but nearly as effective knock-offs in huge numbers, in the process putting the original designer out of business.
In defense of Botvinik (and all other grammar Nazis out there):
Plural nouns (such as princesses, boys) don’t get an ‘S’ at the end in their possessive form. Therefore, you would say: Princesses’ tiaras, or Boys’ manners, and there you would refer to many princesses (or boys).
On the other hand, proper names (like Jobs, Reynolds, NY Times) get their possessive form just like any other noun, by adding apostrophe and ‘S’ at the end:
Jobs’s creation, Reynolds’s movie, Times’s article.
Unfortunately, there is a brand of English muffins sold in the US that improperly uses this form (Thomas’ English Muffins). Interestingly enough, people always (properly) pronounce them Thomases. Now, where did that second ‘S’ come from, if the word is to be spelt Thomas’ ??? What doesn’t help is the cheap daily newspapers (such as NY Post or NY Daily News here in NYC) perpetuate this same grammar mistake on proper names in their reporting.
And on the subject at hand, this guy in China is just prepping the market for Apple’s big splash. IPhone simply cannot fail no matter where it goes. And where iPhone goes, Macs soon follow.
@ Darth Mac
If you scroll down further, you will see that the front of the Chinese X5 knock-off is not even remotely the same as the BMW’s front, albeit the back looks very close at the angle it was photographed.
on topic:
This is happening in countries other than China when it comes to the iPhone. I know up here in Canada, there is a huge iphone community although it has not been officially launched in Canada, and from some of the iPhone forums I frequent, its the same pretty much the same in every country that the iPhone has not been officially launched.
In what sense is the iPhone ‘illegal’ in China? Does it break Chinese laws to import or use the product. I doubt it.
Technology companies would have you believe that if you don’t accept their business model you are behaving illegally.
They don’t own the world yet.
Not “legal” in China? That means that unlocked chinese ideogramed iPhones are illegal there. When everyone knows that this sort of iPhones are absolutely “legal” in U.S. Even if they are not “authorised” by Apple…
Did MDN means that the Chinese Politburo is a better ally for Apple than the American Millenium Law’s Library of Congress exceptions..?
Na! It’s just about p.r., and other deterrent tactics. Law about iPhone (and many others things…) is a no-object in China. Like is nowhere in “Boston Legal” …
“@Botvinnik”
You are mistaken. English grammar stipulates only a plural possessive noun or proper noun is punctuated as “s’.” A singular possessive noun, as cited in above story, should be punctuated as I indicated in my first post (Steve Jobs’s). Do not argue with me again. Okay?
I bought my 8GB iPhone in HK in Mongkok for HK$4780 on 20th Nov. On Nov 2nd when i first asked, it was HK$4180. Forward to just yesterday, the same shop was now selling it for HK$5580. Price is almost increasing daily.
For US readers, forex is US$1.00 = HK$7.78
I’m white. I’m living in China. Read my lips: any foreign businesman who wants an iPhone in China already has one, unlocked. This is not something the ‘dirty Chinese’ are doing, this is what ANY businessman in the country can do, very very easily.
Obviously, people in N.A are doing it too, so, where’s the moral highground coming from?