“An hour before the iPhone was set to make its official debut in China, reporters in Beijing counted nearly 300 customers queued up to buy it, according to ChinaNews.com,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune. “The first sale was scheduled to be made at 6:30 p.m. Friday Beijing time following an elaborate launch ceremony at the ‘The Place,’ China Unicom’s flagship store. Apple vice president Greg Joswiak spoke at the event, calling it ‘an extraordinary day.'”
Elmer-Dewitt reports, “At Apple’s own all-glass store in the Village at Sanlitun retail development, customers were lining up to buy hot drinks and blankets in response to a sudden cooling in Beijing.”
Elmer-Dewitt reports, “Earlier this week, iPhonAsia’s Dan Butterfield reported that China Unicom is offering an amnesty program to entice the estimated 1.5 to 2 million gray-market iPhones already in China to sign up for its service… At the ceremony Friday, China Unicom officials announced that they now have more than 1 million iPhone 3G subscribers.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “qka” for the heads up.]
大屠杀
At this time, the gray-market iPhones are made with 100% of the iPhone’s features and 30% less expensive. As mandated by the government in China, the iPhones are made without the WiFi and if it were me, I would also get a gray-market iPhone until their government lets up on this.
tip of the iceberg.
well played, Dude!
If Apple could just get 1% of the population to buy one.
@Dude,
Classic!
@ spark yah it should be bloodbath by English to Chinese (I assume Mandarin) is imprecise at best.
@Big AL….
Disagree…
If Apple could get 1% of the population of China to write native Chinese apps for the iPhone, *then* the iPhone would sell itself as a major portable tele-comm platform.
Here’s hoping Apple / China / iTunes will approach 100K apps… at that point, China will see an iPhone / iPod Touch Juggernaut.
Here’s hoping Chinese iPhone devs get on board.
@fandango
As far as I know, the App Store is already > 100k apps.
Isn’t that a picture of a Microsoft store opening????
(sarcasm)
Hey MDN, can you put some pictures of Microsoft store opening just besides the iPhone so people can see the difference between choice and “give me something if you want me to line up in your store”
@ fandango,
Exactly what is wrong with 12 million iPhone sales?
Well, that IS China. That could just be a line of people waiting to use a public restroom.
@ fandango:
Apple just got 1 million iPhone subscribers IN ONE DAY! One percent shouldn’t be that difficult.
Great! Though we’ll still continue to steal 1 in 10 off the assembly line!
-白菜
No Blondes in China?
…”As far as I know, the App Store is already > 100k apps.”
Out of which, close to 100,000 are NOT in Chinese, and as such, pretty useless for the majority of mobile users in China. If you didn’t know, most countries of the world have localised versions of operating systems, be it mobile phones, Windows, Mac or other devices that have a UI. While there are always people who will have an English version of the OS, sizable majority simply doesn’t understand English well enough to be able to effectively use the device and instead uses the localised one.
Windows and Office have been available in localised versions forever. Many other mainstream app suites have also been localised (Adobe CS, etc). Mobile phones have definitely always been offered with localised UI. Therefore, Chinese mobile users will expect an iPhone in Chinese, with menus in Chinese, iTunes in Chinese, App Store in Chinese, and apps in Chinese.
So, until Chinese developers step up to the plate and begin offering localised fare, App Store (in English, OR in Chinese) won’t be of much use for the majority of those iPhone owners.
I thought there was a stupid anal-list saying the sales were slow in China. Who was that anal-ist?
On a related note, the other day, ICANN announced implementation to allow Unicode/ISO 10646 Top Level Domain names encoded in ASCII. Therefore, with the IDN already in place, countries with non-latin scripts can now have URLs spelt out in their native alphabet in their entirety (no longer 大屠杀.cn, or информация.ru). This makes it even more important to localise apps and UI.
@MidWest Mac
Quote: “Well, that IS China. That could just be a line of people waiting to use a public restroom.”
….That could just be a line of people waiting to get into their manufacturing jobs.
Well, this IS the USA. The lines here are for unemployment or H1N1 vaccinations.
“Well, that IS China. That could just be a line of people waiting to use a public restroom”
Sounds like you’ve never been to China. People shit and piss in the streets here.
A friend of mine was finishing up lunch in a Chinese cafe, when he noticed all the patrons quickly leaving. The doors were opened and a pack of dogs rushed in, leaped onto the tables and devoured all the left over food. Just the way it is in China.
The iPhone itself is already localized for the Chinese language. I go to the my local Apple Store and find demo iPhones that have been set to Chinese by previous shoppers, and I have to figure out how to set it for English so I can play with it. So the phone itself will be eminently useful in the Chinese market, just as the original iPhone was useful and popular when there were no third-party apps. The apps that support the Chinese language will follow, as developers see the potential market grow.
@Nashgul…
I know, reading is hard…
I said, 100K *NATIVE CHINESE APPS*… as in, available from the Apple Store China.
also as in, written specifically by Chinese developers in Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, or Min. Some people may refer to Chinese languages as ‘Simple’ or ‘Traditional’, but the point i was trying to make is that when Chinese developers write native iPhone apps in a language that their audience (Chinese) can understand and use, the iPhone will see dramatic, wide-spread adoption among the Chinese population; just as, oh, say, English language apps have been purchased by people living in western countries. You know, like the US, GB et al…
Please try to not hurt yourself by thinking about this too much. Now, go back to your cartoons.
MaWo: ‘single’. As in, “I wonder why you still are…”
btw, if you still have any questions or comments to share, please reread ‘Predrag’s’ comments above before posting.
much love,
fandango
Big Al,
The estimated population of China is about 1.3 billion… that’s BILLION… with a friggin’ ‘B’… and you’re telling me ‘wtf?? Apple sold 12 million iPhones there’…You idiot.
The population of China is over 100x what you imagine Apple has already sold. My point in my earlier post is that when native Chinese devs produce native Chinese apps, then Apple won’t be able to produce iPhones / iPod Touch’s fast enough to fulfill demand. In fact, demand will outstrip supply for the next 5 years in China *provided* there are enough native Chinese language apps to encourage widespread iPhone / iPod touch adoption.
The point is that native Chinese-language apps for the iPhone / iPod Touch will drive widespread adoption in China. Do you remember the phrase, “software will drive hardware sales.” Does that seem at all familiar to you?
George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Wake the fsck up.