iPhones Returning to Their Birthplace
It’s unfortunate for Chinese while iPhones are all manufactured in the mainland, Chinese cell phone users cannot yet purchase the Apple do-it-all device. Well, legally. While the iPhone isn’t yet on sale in China’s phone retailers or wired for any of China’s major service providers, according to a friend of mine in Shanghai and confirmed by the always good David Barboza of the Times, the iPhones are everywhere in China. Chinese are commissioning their friends and business partners, even flight attendants, to buy iPhones in the U.S. and either ship them or bring them back to China. There, Chinese pay close to $600 USD for the phone and another $25 to have the phone “unlocked” or made usable with the China Mobile carrier. Barboza writes:
These unofficial distribution networks help explain a mystery that analysts who follow Apple have been pondering: why is there a large gap between the number of iPhones that Apple says it sold last year, about 3.7 million, and the 2.3 million that are actually registered on the networks of its wireless partners in the United States and Europe?
So there’s 1.4 million iPhones on the loose, presumably in countries whose service providers have not yet reached an agreement with Apple, and my guess is that many of these phones are in China. Because when I left Shanghai a couple months ago, guys were salivating over these things and I had a couple people at my old job asked me questions about them. As if I knew anything about the iPhone. My phone didn’t even have a color screen.
I know 2 people (in China) with iPhones. They walked into a store at the computer mall and purchased them. Off-the-shelf. The store even opened them and installed the sim card. Only issue is when iTunes tries to update the software they go back to being locked.