“Approximately 1 million unlocked iPhones brought into China from overseas are being used on China Mobile Communication Corp.’s network, even though the iPhone has not officially made its debut in the world’s largest mobile phone market, an analyst said July 7,” Iris Hong reports for Interfax China.
“‘According to our statistics, approximately 1 million unlocked iPhones are running on China Mobile’s network now,'” Kevin Li, an analyst with In-Stat China specializing in telecom research, told Interfax,” Hong reports.
“The figure is surprisingly high considering that the iPhone’s total worldwide unit sales as of the end of March amounted to about 5.4 million units, according Apple statistics,” Hong reports.
“The number of unlocked iPhones used in China might be even larger, Li said, because iPhones are also used on China United Communications Corp.’s (China Unicom) network, but data on the number in use on the network is unavailable,” Hong reports.
More in the full article here.
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China Mobile: 400,000 unlocked Apple iPhones on our network at end of 2007 – February 15, 2008
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iPhoneDailyNews.
Do we really need another iPhone article? MacDailyNews is so freaking boring now.
Do we really need another post from raskol? raskol is so freaking boring now.
I call bullsh_t!
“brought into China from overseas” Oh, please, Interfax.
“fell off the truck” leaving the local China manufacturer might be more plausible.
These numbers sound like many iPhones have ‘escaped’ over the factory wall rather than been delivered to Apple and sold.
Don’t blame the Chinese either it happens all over, the printing and publishing industry is one of the worst. I know someone who bought a car over the wall from the local car plant (top brand name too), it was delivered in components and took a few weeks but it was cheap!
Actually I changed my mind. Raskol is not boring he’s spot on!
~20% of all iPhones ever sold have been unlocked and sent to China? No. That figure is too high not too have been noticed before. Either these numbers are simply wrong, something else is showing up as an iPhone, or—as Gandalf suggests—many or most of these never made it into the supply chain.
I agree with raskol. 80% of the articles on MDN have to do with iPhones… its getting boring. my RSS feed feels a little redundant…
Do you guys actually read all this junk? Don’t you have jobs?
The more unlocked iPhones the better I say.
I friggin can’t stand AT&T;, and I loathe the deal that Apple has with them. So the more people can pork them the better. Why?
Because AT&T;and Apple are porking iPhone owners. Especially with this new 3G phone coming out.
Maclovin writes, “I agree with raskol. 80% of the articles on MDN have to do with iPhones” That’s only an artifact of the pending release of the iPhone 2. Before any pending event, whether it’s WWDC, an earnings report, whatever the focus shifts to what’s coming.
That said, I want to hear more about the Touch 2. (Some of us don’t need no stinkin’ service plans.)
I’m skeptical about these numbers.
As for coverage of iPhones: many of us own some Apple stock, so anything having to do with the performance of new Apple products is if interest.
With six iPhones you get eggroll.
Probably true story, everybody and their grandma seems to have one. Take the metro in Shanghai and it’s guaranteed you see somebody using it in the train. Am I right, Apple had 6 million iPhones manufactured and they were all sold out by the end of May.
Raskol et al, get used to it regarding the iPhone. It’s the future of Mac OS.
Well, the number seems awfully high, but these are the same people that reported that 400k iPhones were in use in China, 6 months ago.
When I was there in April, I brought my iPhone, and it worked amazingly well on China Mobile’s EDGE network. Much stronger signal in the countryside there, than I get in North Carolina.
When I was in Shanghai, I was standing outside a jewelry store and there were two other iPhones within 10 feet of me. If you extrapolate from that tidbit of info, you’d come up with about 1 billion iPhones in China!
Whatever the true number of unlocked iPhones in China, it’s a large number. Certainly, China Mobile ought to be able to tell who is using their network, and get an accurate count.
ONE MILLION iPhones…unlocked…in China?
Oh, sure. The Chinese would NEVER exaggerate something like that. Never.
They just bought one and copied it for everyone else.
As for new news. Without something new coming out, there seems little else to report about, from what appears here (in between product announcements)
Most of you guys are clueless about the China market.
This 1 million number is perfectly reasonable. VERY LOW from what I reckon actually.
You’re comparing China’s consumers with other markets you’re familiar with such as USA, UK, etc.
The question is how many of ’em are “unofficial” clones?