• iPhone Sales in China Dismal

    iPhone Sales in China Dismal

    Techtree News Staff, Dec 11, 2009 1757 hrs IST

    As expected

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Almost two months ago, Apple finally launched the iPhone in China amidst much fanfare. China Unicom, the country's second largest mobile operator was the chosen carrier for Apple.

Fast forward to December and we now have sales figures for the iPhone in China, which tell a very dismal picture of the scheme of things. In a country of over 1.3 billion, Apple has sold only 100,000 handsets. China Unicom, the operator boasts of a 140 million strong userbase and not even a fraction of those users have bothered to get an iPhone for themselves.

Now, a sales figure of 100,000 units in two months in not THAT bad. But in a massive market like China, such sales figures are hardly encouraging. Just to compare how things stand, in South Korea, the country's largest carrier KT has managed to receive over 60,000 pre-orders for the yet to be launched iPhone. Do note that KT only has 14 million subscribers - hardly a blip compared to the 140 million Goliath that China Unicom is. In China, Apple is offering crippled versions of the iPhone 3G and the 3GS. The devices do not come with Wi-Fi and a lot of features "standard" on the iPhone. Another issue that's affecting the sales of the "legitimate" iPhones in the country is the availability of the "normal", feature packed iPhone in the grey markets of China.

Then, there is the affordability factor as well - with a large percent of China Unicom subscribers being unable to afford the steep price of an iPhone, the kind of sales figures we're seeing hardly comes as a surprise.

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Discussion Board
(2) Comments
Seth
,Melbourne, on Dec 14, 2009 04:37 AM
As you point out, the Unicom iPhone is competing against more feature rich unlocked grey market iPhones. The fact is that the iPhone was already doing well in China before its official lauch. Apple doesnt much care cause it's getting the handset revenue one way or another. Unicom will benefit in the long run as well by getting additional 'locked in' users and having a competitve advantage against China Mobile (ie only source of lgeitiate iPhones and more 'locked in' users). Given the huge penetration of grey market iPhones in China, it's no suprise at all that initial sales of legitmate phones were slow as there was no pent up demand.
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Federico
,NYC, on Dec 11, 2009 07:27 PM
Thing.is up till the third week of November estmated sales were at less than 10K. It seems that the sales has picked up. Could it be that the current sales per day is approaching 10K? Same thing happened in Japan. Initial sales were abysmal and yet three months later a million had been sold and the pace of sales have not abated.
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