iPhone in China in October, say sources
By Ronald O Carlson
Talk about your slow boat to China. Rumors of the Apple’s game-changing handset officially on sale in the Middle Kingdom have circulated for years and still all we have to report are rumors and whispered hopes.
Reuters reports that China Unicom to announce a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone as soon as Friday. Further, Taiwanese handset OEM Hon Hai has already begun manufacturing the WCDMA 3G handsets required for that country.
Apple has long sought to officially sell the iPhone in China where it’s believed that hundreds of thousands of hacked iPhones are in use. However, like the Russian market where high handset prices have muted sales, Cupertino’s impact could be blunted by a combination of high prices and the lack of Wi-Fi.
A little fish in a big ocean…
Further, Apple’s partner, China Unicom, is the country’s second largest carrier well behind leader China Mobile, which is said to control two-thirds of the market of nearly 700 million subscribers.
Lastly, 3G deployment in the world’s biggest mobile phone market is only just beginning, another factor that could blunt the iPhone’s appeal given its users’ ravenous data needs.
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