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Official iPhone sees tiny sales in China

4 November 2009 17:48 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 8 comments

Last week China Unicom began selling the Apple iPhone officially in China for the first time ever, making the smartphone available to over 200 million subscribers.

Unicom is seemingly fighting for sales however, and 9to5mac is reporting that only 5000 units have been sold since launch. Bloomberg News adds that Apple expects only 460,000 iPhones to sell in the nation per year, a number less than the amount of grey market units that are sold there (for less than Unicom's price.)

Each model of the official phone (8GB or 32GB) can be purchased with 3-year contract but the prices are very expensive. The smaller capacity model will sell for 4,999 yuan ($700+ USD) and the larger model will sell for 6,999 yuan ($1000+ USD). Each is also lacking Wi-Fi due to government regulation.

Permalink to this article | Topic: Phones

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Discuss this article!
H08 (Member) 5 November 2009 0:21
ouch! out of 200 million! [ + quote]
JackDuran (Newbie) 5 November 2009 3:58
"Each model of the official phone (8GB or 32GB)" Hmm are they selling only these two models or is it 8,16 and 32Gb that's being sold? I wonder what are the reasons for these little sales? [ + quote]
scum101 (Member) 5 November 2009 4:40
chiphones for 10% of the price and open to every network... the standard income levels in china... want me to continue? [ + quote]
KillerBug (Senior Member) 5 November 2009 4:44
Good...this hurts China Unicom (a government run capitalist group, run by a communist country). It also hurts Apple (the company that pushes AT&T on the US). [ + quote]
xtago (Newbie) 5 November 2009 14:56
you'll find the iPhone offers poor features compared to the local phones. So few people will be interested in buying it. Look at the car audio side of thing Alpine doesn't have a blu-ray player or Divx player yet in china they have car player that'll do every format under the sun plus some more for like $50 and the alpine will be $1000. Which one are you going to buy for bang of buck. [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5 November 2009 14:59
xtago (Newbie) 5 November 2009 15:00
*Originally posted by JackDuran:* "Each model of the official phone (8GB or 32GB)" Hmm are they selling only these two models or is it 8,16 and 32Gb that's being sold? I wonder what are the reasons for these little sales? Be the 8gig and 32gig they do the same thing in Australia only sell those phones. So the $149 or $200 only exists in the USA [ + quote]
DVDBack23 (Staff Member) 5 November 2009 16:18
*Originally posted by JackDuran:* "Each model of the official phone (8GB or 32GB)" Hmm are they selling only these two models or is it 8,16 and 32Gb that's being sold? I wonder what are the reasons for these little sales? Correct. No 16GB model, only the 8 (entry-level) and 32 (everyone else). [ + quote]
emugamer (Member) 5 November 2009 16:46
On the lighter side, at first glance, the title of this article made me chuckle. [ + quote]