3G iPhones to come, have come, to China
By Gareth Powell
iPhones in China will soon start to be linked to 3G. This is because the government has at long last approved of 3G. And Apple iPhone is poised to take advantage of the greatest potential market in the world.
In truth, the situation is not as clear cut as that. In China it rarely is.
A generalization is that in most Asian countries entertaining at home is the exception, entertaining in a restaurant is the norm. Thus if you want to impress you can only do it with stuff you carry about your body.
Sixty years ago it was the Parker pen. Which is why in many Asian languages the word for a pen is pakkah. Then it was watches. Now it is mobile phones.
Important, if you can, that you carry the latest and greatest. Possibly, if you are vulgar, in a case that looks as though it has tiger stripes.
Thus, although officially the Apple iPhone has not been on sale in China there are estimated to be over a million of them there already.
Are they genuine iPhones?
Quite a lot of the time. They come in from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. Or they ease the way out of the factory door where they are made. Or flight crews bring them in as gray imports.
That is the genuine ones. Are there any other kind? Of course, this is Asia.
If we go to Alibaba which is a site owned in China which gets more international by the day and go to mobile phones we find:
Swinder Corporation is offering a phone which is Quad-band GSM phone (GSM 850 /900/ 1800 / 1900 MHz)
3.0″ TFT touch screen; supports Dual SIM cards standby; fantastic interactive touch panel MMI design; Mutli-languages: English, Italian, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Poland and more; Support SMS, MMS, and Email function; support FM function; support JAVA; support MP3/MP4 multimedia player. It looks like an iPhone, works nearly like an iPhone. The picture at the beginning of this article comes from its entry in Alibaba.
Wang Guoyong Private Enterprise which makes childrens’ clothes, cups, hand fans, technical products and machines which are the spitting image of the iPhone. The factory is in Luyang District, Hefei, Anhui in China which is a bit out of the way. And what is in its catalog as shown here is an iPhone, or near facsimile.
Thus G3 coming to China may mean a bonanza in the sale of iPhones and other 3G capable machines. But do not think they are coming into virgin territory. Over a million iPhones got there before them. Quite a lot of them genuine.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 1:01 am
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
Stumble It!
