AfterDawn: News

Official iPhone sees tiny sales in China

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.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 4 Nov 2009 17:48

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• 8 comments

• H08

  ouch! out of 200 million!

  5.11.2009 00:21 #1

• 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?

  5.11.2009 03:58 #2

• scum101

  chiphones for 10% of the price and open to every network... the standard income levels in china... want me to continue?

  5.11.2009 04:40 #3

• KillerBug

  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).

  5.11.2009 04:44 #4

• xtago

  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.

  5.11.2009 14:56 #5

• xtago

  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

  5.11.2009 15:00 #6

• DVDBack23

  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).

  5.11.2009 16:18 #7

• emugamer

  On the lighter side, at first glance, the title of this article made me chuckle.

  5.11.2009 16:46 #8