From China Realtime Report:
Apple’s belated launch of the iPhone in China last year was dampened for many users by the discovery that the handset did not have Wi-Fi capabilities, but a new Wi-Fi-enabled Chinese iPhone may finally be on the horizon, according to a Chinese government testing body.
A man displays an iPhone along a street in Beijing (
The State Radio Monitoring Center, which handles radio frequency testing for handsets released in China, posted an approval notice for a handset by Apple Inc. with wireless Internet capabilities. The listing, dated April 26, doesn’t provide enough information to tell whether the device is an iPhone 3GS or anewer model, but says the device includes China’s homegrown wireless standard, WAPI.
An employee who answered the phone at the testing center on Thursday confirmed that the listing means the device has been approved, but declined to answer any other questions, saying she was not informed on any other issues. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
IPhones currently officially sold in China do not have Wi-Fi because government regulations USED to force handset makers to use China’s homegrown wireless standard, WAPI, instead (even though consumers predominantly use Wi-Fi). Officials changed the regulation last year to allow Wi-Fi on handsets on the condition that the handsets also had WAPI capabilities, but apparently not in time for Apple to have one approved. People who want iPhones with Wi-Fi in China currently must buy them from overseas, or from one of the many sellers here who bring them in from other markets and resell them for as much as $840.
Apple’s partner China Unicom estimated that only 5,000 Wi-Fi-less iPhones were sold in the first four days after the devices launch last October, a tiny number compared to other markets, especially when considering that China is the largest mobile market by subscribers. By comparison, Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in the 30 hours after the first model went on sale in the U.S. in 2007, and in South Korea, where Apple had plenty of competition, 65,000 pre-orders were taken when the iPhone debuted last December.
Adding Wi-Fi could help the iPhone’s reception, as could Apple’s plan to open 25 more stores in China. China Unicom Chief Executive Chang Xiaobing has also indicated that if conditions permit, the companies may lower the prices for the handset in China, which are currently $730 to $1,020. With Google, a competitor of Apple’s in the mobile space, on shaky ground with Chinese authorities after a spat over censorship and cybersecurity, perhaps the iPhone still has a fighting chance to crack the Chinese market.
–Loretta Chao and Bai Lin
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