Just as our sister site MobileCrunch wrote about yesterday, Chinese telecom giant China Unicom has just officially announced that it has reached a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in China. They did so as an aside in their earnings announcement, which you can find here.
Some details not revealed yesterday include that this is a 3-year deal between China Unicom and Apple, and that the first iPhones will ship sometime in Q4 of this year (the report yesterday had said October, which is certainly a possibility). Not stated is whether this will be the iPhone 3GS or the older iPhone 3G [Update below]. Recent reports had indicated that either way, the device would not come with WiFi functionality (which had supposedly long been one sticking point between Apple and the Chinese carriers).
China Unicom is the second largest mobile provider in China, behind China Mobile. But even as the number two in China, that still makes it the third largest mobile provider in the world. Or think about it this way: While the U.S. has something like 270 million cellular subscribers total across all the carriers, China Unicom has over 140 million alone. For comparison’s sake, AT&T has just about half of that, around 78 million.
If Apple can capture a significant percentage of the China Unicom subscribers, and possibly pull in some from other carriers (China has around 700 million total cellular subscribers), that will be huge. While the iPhone is now in over 80 countries, sales are still dominated by the U.S. which accounts for just about half of the units. Success in China could obviously change that, big time.
Update: One of our commenters, Snake Chen, appears to be reporting live from the press conference in China. According to him, China Unicom will get both the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G, just like we have in the U.S. Here’s his coverage in Chinese, and some pictures.
Hi MG
It is 3G and 3Gs.Please see our news: News:http://bit.ly/cIBbN Minisite:http://bit.ly/116XfR Live Pics:http://bit.ly/3nJgZc
Follow my twitter,I will keep update
snakechen
thanks Snake, any pictures of the iPhone?
iPhone is gonna be runaway success in China… 1.5B people, even 0.001% of people get it, it will still be more than entire population of most populous state!
Gotta see more details..
Possibly, but Apple #ucked up by waiting so long to release a legitimate product:
* Just about every one that wanted an iPhone and could afford it, has one through the grey market.
* Those that cant afford it have plenty of iPhone clones to choose from – even the iFone Nano LOL.
Apple are going to reap in some cash, but they could have done a lot, lot better.
Hey, MG
China Unicom is not the third largest mobile operator, please correct the mistake.
http://en.wikip...twork_operators
7th in the world according to this list.
Yes, you are right. NO idea where the ranking number techcrunch get from.
Wikipedia rule #1: trust, but verify.
hard sell, doubt it will be sucess
Oooh, they changed the radio so it supports the 1700mhz band. Now Apple just needs a CDMA version and a T-Mobile version that supports 2100MHZ/1700MHZ. They can do it, I would be in serious disdain if this disgusting relationship with AT&T is extended, to the point that I would get a MyTouch and an iTouch.
Open iPone? lol in ur dreams. Dont even think they are gonna release/loose that ATT xclusivity.
Go Mameo N900 if you deserve it.
width of pixels on N900 = length of pixels on iPon
Be Open…
The Nokia N900 is a beautiful brick for tech geeks but it won’t sell anywhere near the numbers of the iPhone. Non-tech users will stay away from that thing no matter how good the hardware is. Nokia will be lucky to sell 500,000 of those things in a year even though it has a pretty keyboard and can multitask 50 applications at once. The N900 is an iPhone killer just like the Palm Pre was. All specs and no substance.
It’s about time. Was wondering why it took so long for China to adopt this. It’s no wonder that Apple stock has doubled back from it’s low – too bad I sold it. This is going to be pretty big in China. A lot have unlocked the previous ones. Great article MG.
they wanted to have one more layer of app filtering software over Apple App Store so that they can monitor the usage and ‘illegal’ activities by users as well as Apple.
Apple’s not used to being controlled by some one else and in this case China. So it naturally takes longer to get adjusted to.
Cool stuff, Apple is expanding everywhere.
yea, with oneoff carrier contracts and exclusivity (slavery shall i say)… if that is your definition of expansion.
How does your point affect the definition of the word expansion? Entering the world’s most populous market on whatever terms is called expansion in my book.
Startur
Ya selling iPhone with a carrier is like selling Macs only with Verizon or Comcast and controlling every app that can be installed on a Mac
700 million mobile phone users in China. That is off the charts!!!!!!!!!!!! I have no doubt that in a couple of years Apple can actually nail this market. Chinese love fashionable items as it shows that they have made it in one way or another. The fastest growing consumer market in the world. Having a pair of Nikes is a status symbol and in a year or so iphones will fall into this category, thats until some Chinese company exactly copies the iphone and flogs it for a fifteenth of the price. LOL! Seriously I see this as an amazing move for Apple. Any news about India and Apples strategy there.
This is a great opportunity for Apple and any iPhone developers. However, there seems to be little detail about what additional processes the Chinese authorities will almost certainly expect to censor apps sold via the AppStore. I wonder if only China “approved” apps will appear in their store? – yet another hurdle within the approval process which is already pretty capricious.
It will be a failure, just like official iPhone sales in Russia.
Consumer patterns, market size are totally different in these two countries. Not comparable.
can someone explain why wifi functionality is disabled?
is it because all internet traffic have to be routed through China Unicom and therefore can be firewalled and filtered?
No, it is a technical decision. The wireless connection standard in china is WAPI, which is different from WIFI. Apple refuse to change the wireless module from WIFI to WAPI, because it will increase the cost of iphone. So they finally decided to put it away.
This phone will fit perfectly in China, since they’ll be able to easily control what the people are doing with the hardware and software.
Google Translate http://bit.ly/11pWF9
From the translated link given: “Said Chang Xiaobing, China Unicom will launch its own application software platform, is not only APPstore, also includes andriod of open software.”
The Chinese iPhone will not have WiFi, but it will be both an Apple and Android platform?
Huh?
andriod open software playform is for china unicom’s standardlized cellphone,not for iPhone
Steffen,
it says android because China Unicom is going to have its OWN app store that supports iPhone, Android as well as other platform.
Essentially, China Unicom owns the app store. Everywhere else, Apple owns its app store.
You can check out more about the details on my blog post http://www.kai-...ai.com/node/174
So Apple’s app approval process isn’t strict enough for CHINA? I’m amazed.
Hello there… Recently i get a new i-phone, made in China, without memory… Is it anyone know what kind of a memory card gets in?
If someone knows, please write to me to my email address: chris24-seven@hotmail.com
Thanks a lot…
Christofer.
before everyone gets too excited (oh, too late), keep in mind the cost… there are reports that the iphone will sell for 3000 RMB ($439 USD), plus you have to sign a 2 year contract which includes buying another 3000 RMB value in usage credits. so that’s almost a $900 USD outlay.
http://tech.qia.../71@5151556.htm
what is the average annual salary in china, you ask? about $4,500USD annually in *urban* areas. in rural areas, it is much less.