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Fuzzy Logic
Report: 400,000 unlocked iPhones in China – at least!
Fuzzy Logic
Report: 400,000 unlocked iPhones in China – at least! | Report: 400,000 unlocked iPhones in China – at least! |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 18 February 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2
There are already 400,000 unlocked iPhones on China Mobile alone, not
counting China Unicom and carriers in Hong Kong, according to an In-Stat
report. The news comes despite China Mobile reportedly turning Apple
down due to Apple’s desire to share in the monthly revenues as they do
with AT&T, O2, Orange and Deutsche Telekom. Featured Whitepaper
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Although Steve Jobs reported over 4 million iPhones sold during his Macworld 2008 keynote, it’s clear that Apple is losing serious money from the enormous volume of unlocked iPhones worldwide, none of which are generated those juicy ongoing monthly commissions Apple receives from official carriers in the US, the UK, France and Germany. MacDailyNews quotes Anty Zheng of In-Stat China saying that: "The shock wave caused by the Apple iPhone has been spreading from the US to China at an unbelievable rate. Savvy entrepreneurs have been purchasing hundreds of thousands of iPhones in the US and Europe, then “cracking” the operating system to allow the device to be used on any GSM network”. Zheng continues saying: “According to China Mobile, the biggest wireless carrier in China, there were about 400,000 cracked iPhones using its cellular network service at the end of 2007, representing one out of every 10 iPhone shipments announced officially by Apple. The figure surprised us as it is fourfold of that we estimated before”. Zheng is then quoted providing additional information on why the iPhone is successful in China. He said that: "We have never doubted that the iPhone will achieve greater success than iPod in China if Apple teams with China Mobile to launch its Chinese version. There are two reasons”. “Firstly,”, said Zheng, “different from the US where the smartphone market is fairly limited, appealing primarily to business users, The smartphone market in China, though, is an entertainment-oriented individual consumer market. The main reasons that Chinese mobile users purchase smartphones include entertainment (such as music players, cameras and video) and to access mobile Internet applications (such as IM, e-book, and games). We believe the iPhone will be favored by these consumers as it can better meet such demand”. So, what did In-Stat’s spokesperson Anty Zheng say next? Please read onto page 2. |
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