China Unicom: 5,000 iPhones sold in first weekend
The iPhone didn't get quite the reception in China as it did in other markets.
The exclusive carrier for the device in the country, China Unicom, said Tuesday that it signed up 5,000 iPhone subscribers in the first four days it was available. While that's certainly not a blockbuster opening weekend, the carrier says it's pleased nonetheless.
The mob scene at the iPhone's 2007 debut in San Francisco. The phone's reception in China was a bit cooler.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)"We are satisified with iPhone sales so far, and we aim to have an additional 1 million new 3G subscribers each month in the near future," China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing told Reuters.
It's a difficult comparison when you measure the first weekend sales in China against the 146,000 AT&T signed up in the U.S. during the original iPhone's first weekend in June 2007. Besides having to sell the device without WiFi, China has to contend with something U.S. carriers largely do not: a vast market for iPhone knockoffs.
Referred to as gray-market handsets, these are cell phones made in China that are not legally licensed by the government. Manufacturers don't pay taxes on them and they use fake Mobile Equipment Identity numbers. As a result, the phones are cheaper and can be used with prepaid wireless accounts, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they're increasingly popular.
China's gray-market phone shipments are expected to reach 145 million units this year, a 44 percent increase over the 101 million shipped in 2008, according to market research firm iSuppli. For perspective, the worldwide (legally licensed) cell phone market is 1.13 billion, so the 145 million is a sizable chunk of that, almost 13 percent.
Still, Apple analysts are already calling the phone's debut in China "a disappointment." Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster said he was expecting China to contribute 1 million to 2 million iPhone sales to the worldwide total of unit sales for next year. Based on the weak opening numbers, he is revising China's contribution to 550,000 next year.
China is also in the middle of building out more of its 3G network, so it could take time before devices like the iPhone truly takes hold, the way it has in other markets.
"We believe that eventually China will emerge as a major market for iPhone sales," wrote Jaffray in a research note Tuesday, "but it could take a year or two to gain meaningful unit traction as it did in the U.S."
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6MwKzaXzXDo&pos=7
Five thousand ????!!!!! Almost fell out of my chair LOL
In most of these countries, landlines are not good alternatives so they rely on their cell phones for making *gasp* phone calls. So they would want a cell phone that is really good at voice calls. Thats not the iphone's strength.
Last I heard, the call ability is completely dependent on the carrier. Also, it's been well-documented that it's currently cheaper to find an iphone in China on the black market that does NOT have wi-fi removed, so why in the world would people pay more for the government-mandated weaker version? Duh.
When you live in a country where minimum wage is $6 a day (U.S. equivelant), and you have to feed a family or 6 on that, a genuine iPhone with some of the features removed just doesn't seem like a very justifiable purchase.
I also think Apple still has not learned their lesson. Granting the phone to a single provider removes market competition (making sure prices and services are kept at reasonable levels and always improving). The iPhone sales in this country would be off the map if Apple would have worked things out with Verizon and let them compete with AT&T.
There are still countless people chanting on and on about how they would buy one if there were only another carrier, so now Apple is back at the bargaining table with Verizon and about to get slapped with legal action to open their draconian phone. Yet here we are in China... repeating the same actions and expecting different results... Yeah... Apple and their "geniuses".
Comparing AT&T and Verizon is like comparing Apples and Oranges. Reason why Apple went with AT&T was because AT&T uses GSM network - the same technology that is used worldwide. What this means for Apple is, creating one phone standard to sell anywhere in the world. If they were to include Verizon then they would need to have GSM and the outdated CDMA phones, the same reason why Nokia the world's largest cell phone & smart phone manufacturer is almost invisible in the US market.
iPhone will come to Verizon when they move to LTE (4G) which also supports GSM.
Are you at all familiar with the way China handled the negotiations? You act as if Apple had much say in getting a footprint and how they go about it.
I?m not sure where you get your info from, but you are wrong about Apple not going with Verizon because of its CDMA network. Apple has never even hinted this. And it would be relatively easy to produce a CDMA iPhone if they wanted to. Every other phone manufacturer produces both CDMA and GSM phones. And I?m not sure what your point is about Nokia, since they also produce both GSM and CDMA phones.
This reporter should mention the price tag apple put on Chinese market, so that people can understand what is that mean.
In my opinion, Apple, put 5000 Yuan (equal 700 dollars), which I believe including certain period of prepaid phone bill, is just not a right attitude for its customers.
It was Apple that drove up the price, plus other knock offs and other simply better phones that are around $700 simply make iphone a loser in the Chinese market.
You see the chinese go after value, not propaganda... which is mostly what sells the iphons.
It's like when the Beatles were delaying coming to the USA. They only wanted to come if they were #1 already, otherwise it would damage their image, opening for someone like Donovan.
Mac market share has dropped to 5.3 % just days after Windows 7 came out.
And like I said before : One phone does NOT suit all. Android gives you a range of great choices.
Does this mean crApple will now stop isolating and segregating Asian "employees" and forcing them to spend their day staring at the wall all day before the either quit or are "layed off"?
Chinese can get Wifi-enabled iPhone, unlocked, on the street for cheaper. Why would anyone buy from China Unicom?
When you go overseas for an iPhone - there are two kinds - Original and Copy - there are actually different kinds of copies. Original iPhones are expensive to Asians, but they're all over the place.
With an unlocked iPhone, you can pay as you go cheaply for both data and calling - unlike in the U.S., where AT&T and TMobile go to great lengths to prevent an iPhone owner without contract from doing this on their networks and want iPhone users to go to a $35 data plan minimum and then extra for minutes, etc. Even if you want to use your unlocked iPhone for calling only (use wifi areas for email, etc), they make it difficult.
Chinese people are good at making hardware, not software. Andriod will be huge in china, because there will be 30- 40 dollar andriod phones, from dozens and dozens of manufacturers.
Btw, the iphone also flopped bigtime in india and is not doing well in japan (which also has very good smartphones).
- by Harry2011 November 4, 2009 1:16 PM PST
- the iphone flopped in india too, where the gray market is very small:
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(30 Comments)http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2009/gb2009041_266236.htm
basically, these large countries have so many good smartphones and apple's brand just doesn't click with them - windows for example is extremely dominant in China.