Results tagged “apple”

So the iPhone was finally launched in China after much rumor mongering and fanfare and... well, it seems like most everyone who wanted an iPhone already has one. While the launch party in Beijing was a rousing success, actual first day sales were nowhere near as wild as in the U.S. or Japan. About what you could expect, we guess, from a crippled product (no WiFi) that came months and months after it was released elsewhere. Especially if it has turned out to be actually more expensive than its gray market brethren.

Aside from the cut-and-paste actor-replacements in James Bond trailers, controversial fake RMB, assorted videos of imposter pandas and the like, the market, its newest target is the highly publicized (yet unconfirmed and completely rumored) Apple tablet.

• More Battles Ahead for IPhone in China [PC World] "Apple has emerged from winding negotiations with an iPhone deal in China, but the handset will still face government pitfalls and look-alike competitors in the country. Local carrier China Unicom said Friday it had reached a three-year iPhone distribution deal with Apple, ending months of rumor about an impending agreement. The carrier will offer the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, with the first handsets going on sale in the fourth quarter."
• Taiwan seeks to smooth ruffled Chinese feathers [AP] "China has canceled or postponed several events meant to underscore improving relations with Taiwan, apparently to show anger over the Dalai Lama's visit to the island, Taiwan's governing party said Tuesday. The visit of the Tibetan spiritual leader — aimed at offering comfort to the victims of Typhoon Morakot — has created the most serious challenge for relations between the democratic island and the communist mainland since Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took office 15 months ago on a platform of ending 60 years of hostility."
• An unlikely victim of China's censorship [UPI Asia] "It is well known that Internet access is not unrestricted in China. But who would expect that New Threads (Xin Yusi, www.xys.org), an overseas Chinese-language website, would be among the inaccessible sites? A search of the term “New Threads” at Google inside China and at Baidu, a Chinese-language search engine, did not even generate links to the website. New Threads is not anti-Chinese government, nor is it pornographic or related to the banned Falungong cult. It is not about Taiwan independence, Tibet or Xinjiang. It simply reveals academic misconduct in China."

With the iPhone coming to China in September (fingers crossed), maybe it's time to start checking out all the cool new iphone apps you can download... like this one, entitled "Kobe's New Identity." What?

In perhaps the biggest sign that the iPhone actually is coming to China and soon, China Unicom has reportedly bought 5 million units from Apple for 10 billion RMB. What's more, it will finally begin selling them in September, with the 8GB standard iPhone set at a very reasonable 2,400RMB and the 16GB priced at 4,800RMB, according to the International Business Times. Sounds great for the many of us who have been waiting years for this to happen! Now to cross our fingers and hope this news is real, unlike the many instances where we've been burned before.

We all know that the Apple heads at Silicon Valley are responsible for the iconic aesthetic presentation and minimalist technical specifications of the iPod, but we think much less about where its low price comes from. Recently, however, we've been pretty startlingly reminded that there are laborers actually responsible for assembling these iPods, sometimes in substandard working conditions that might help cut costs, despite the compromise in ethics.

On your marks! Get set! Whoooa.. So close yet so far. The eager beavers at Reuters got us all excited earlier today reporting that China Unicom had finally inked the deal to bring the iPhone to China. They went so far as to report that the device would cost Unicom RMB3,000 per phone, a price they will hopefully pass on to the consumer which would make it RMB1,000 cheaper than the smuggled US models sold at Metro City.

The 25-year-old Foxconn employee who killed himself after being interrogated about a missing iPhone prototype had demonstrated a pattern of suspiciously losing products, according to the New York Times. James Lee, GM of Foxconn's China operations, said that several times products had gone missing and then he got them back. Oh. Well then. We guess the solitary confinement and searching his home and alleged beating was justified. NOT. Dear Foxconn, if your employee is acting out of line, you give them a warning and then fire them. Nothing justifies acting like thugs towards them, and any attempts to sully his name after the fact stinks as much as the $44,000 and Apple laptop you paid to his family in blood money. Source: Apple Insider

• Eclipse at Sheshan Hill [The Atlantic] "The forested slopes of Sheshan Hill rise a hundred meters above the plains of once rural, now suburban, Songjiang District in the southwest corner of sprawling Shanghai. At the top, China’s only Catholic basilica - an eighty-year old red brick building with an onion dome - is flanked on one side by the white dome of a modern telescope, and on the other by the century-old buildings that constitute the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. Most mornings, the hilltop is silent but for a handful of priests and a few locals willing to climb the old stone stairways to go to mass. But this morning was a bit different: Sheshan was in the path of the century’s longest eclipse, and the local media had recommended it as one of three ideal locations for watching the event."
• In China, a Rocky Ascent for Basketball [NYT] "With 1.3 billion potential fans, China is increasingly seen as a financial promised land for N.B.A. stars through endorsement deals, and the league itself has established a robust organization here valued at $2 billion. But China’s own professional league, the Chinese Basketball Association, has hardly enjoyed a smooth ascendance alongside this country’s basketball boom. American players and agents describe broken contracts, unpaid wages, suspicions of game-fixing and rising resentment toward foreign players. Several players have left China after failing to receive paychecks. Last month, the league announced that it lost $17 million last season, which ended in May."
• Sweeping Africa under the rug: where is China in Darfur? [The Carter Center] "Given the importance of China's financial ties to Sudan, many in the international community have expected China to play a much larger role in the Darfur peace process. Development aid from China goes directly into the hands of President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party, which has been accused of war crimes relating to the Darfur crisis. Consequently, the Chinese government's practices run contrary to their ideology."

Apple has confirmed the unfortunate suicide of the 25-year-old Foxconn employee we reported on yesterday. Sun Dayong, the deceased, was suspected to have been subjected to "unbearable interrogation techniques" after an iPhone prototype under his care went missing. This is believed to have led him to commit suicide. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told CNET that Apple was "saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death... We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect." Source: Gizmodo

Rumors are swelling that some parties may have taken Apple's secrecy policy to the extreme, causing one 25-year-old employee at Foxconn, the manufacturing company for the iPhone, to commit suicide.

The words "unconfirmed", "anonymous" and "sketchy" all come to mind whenever we talk about the arrival of the iPhone to China, but this latest story actually originates from Foxconn, the contract manufacturer for Apple's game-changing phone. JLM Pacific Epoch reports that an unnamed source within the company has leaked that they have already commenced mass production of wifi-less versions of the iPhone for release in this country.

According to Yahoo, the iPhone is now one step closer to its official Chinese launch. Apple has finally applied for a Chinese network access license for the phone, and last week submitted it to the Telecommunication Technology Labs for testing.

If you are waiting anxiously for the upcoming iPhone 3.0 firmware update - due to be released tomorrow - but concerned that it will relock your iPhone, you need not fear (too much). @MuscleNerd from the iPhone Dev Team announced on twitter that he would be airing a demo of an unlocked iPhone running on the new software.

Resistance is futile: they've already started installing Green Dam internet filtering software in schools. The censorware is, according to its proponents, help in the eternal battle against smut and other morally damaging materials. Although we have our doubts as to how many Chinese students really have the time to scour smut at school, we are old enough

As "G-Day" approaches and suburban Beijing start to get their 3G signal, we are still speculating about the arrival of the iPhone. Rather than relying on official announcements, pundits are now looking further up the iPhone supply chain to make predictions about how and who will bring the iPhone to China.

As is the tradition, each year Google creates a rumor or a hoax that is designed to give the internet community a bit of a giggle. This year Google rehashed an old theme especially for us Chinese "fools."

Apparently tmcnet.com reports an announcement last Wednesday that suggests that Unicom will officially be selling the iPhone in China in May to co-inside with the launch of their 3G service. This is welcome news after all the rumors and innuendo that have been going around. Strange thing is, the iPhone page that appeared on the China Unicom website seems to have been taken down. (to look at a screenshot of the page click here). So until we see more news on this, we're not holding our breath.

The iPhone's arrival (particularly the 3G variety) has been the subject of a great deal of speculation of late. Particularly since China Unicom, the only mobile carrier to provide the iPhone supported WCDMA 3G standard, already announced that they will be rolling out their 3G service on the 17th May.

Sure, here in China there's legitimate download sites and there's mp3.baidu.com, but if you've ever wanted to straggle the fence between legality and piracy, there's a way to do that too. Taobao has long been harboring many iTunes store gift voucher hackers, selling $200 USD (1,368 RMB) gift cards for as little as 18RMB.

We've been burned so many times before, so we're taking this with a grain of salt - but China Tech News reports that China Unicom has reached an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone 3G to China by May 2009. If the rumor's correct, then it means that China Unicom will be launching the iPhone the same time it starts up its WCDMA 3G network nation-wide. Apple had allegedly been talking to China Mobile as well, but talks stalled over the tech company's iTunes app business.

Surprise, surprise! Talks between China Mobile and Apple over bringing the iPhone to China (legally) have stalled yet again - this time over the iTunes apps store. Allegedly, China Mobile is itching to operate the application store itself in a typical ploy to retain as much control as possible. Also, unlike their Western counterparts, Chinese phone users don't typically have credit cards, preferring to pay for things by depositing money into their mobile phone accounts. Add that to already ongoing issues like figuring out which of the three 3G networks the iPhone plays the nicest with, and it's probably safe to say we won't be seeing any Made-for-China goodness soon.

Apple began selling refurbished products in China on Tuesday, offering discounts of up to 22 percent for consumers willing to get second-hand goods. The products on Apple's Chinese website ranged from 308 yuan for a shuffle to 14,000 yuan for an iMac. Ah, the magical circle of product life: Good gets made in China, sold in the U.S., broken in the U.S. and sold back to China. Source: Reuters

If you have a US iPhone 3G and have been tempted by repeated reminders in iTunes to upgrade to the 2.2 version of the iPhone firmware, you may soon be able to give in to the temptation without fear of relocking your device to AT&T. The iPhone Dev Team has announced that they will be launching a software hack to unlock your 3G iPhone on New Year's Eve. This will allow you to upgrade your firmware and keep it unlocked for use in China or anywhere else with a GSM network for that matter.

Finally after much hype and news, the Meizu M8 is due for release on December 8th. The guys from PC Online have had the chance to test it against the iPod Touch (because iPhones are not legally available in China yet).

The imminent arrival of the the much coveted Apple iPhone to China has brought with it many challenges. Many tech pundits have been speculating if Apple will create a iPhone specifically for China given that China Mobile, the carrier that will carry the phone, will use the locally developed 3G standard TD-SCDMA. iPhones around the world currently support the more widely accepted W-CDMA standard which will be adopted by rival 3G mobile carrier, China Unicom.

This one's for all you fans of Chinese counterfeits gadget freaks. From Engadget.com:

After what feels like centuries of waiting (and suffering through that painful CeBIT demo), we finally get to see the Meizu M8's OS in action... and it's not as bad as you think. Sure, the interface is totally derivative of the iPhone, and there is that pesky cursor floating around, but all-in-all it looks like the company has managed to knock out a decent -- if incredibly familiar -- UI for its long-delayed phone. Still, there's some low rent hilarity in this video. Our favorites? The smattering of soft porn pictures and video, and Meizu CEO and all-around bon vivant Jack Wong revealed in a reflection...

Tech super blog TechCrunch tells us of a rumour swirling around that China Mobile will be "offering the iPhone at a heavily subsidized discount in order to court the massive Chinese population". An article at it.hexun.com which cites a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as its source says:

China Mobile will procure the handsets for their full price, and then on-sell subsidized handsets to consumers. The source explained that China Mobile could buy a 3G iPhone from Apple for USD 299 – an example price – and then sell the handset to users for USD 199, treating the additional USD 100 as compensation to Apple. [Translation by Marbridge Consulting]

Check out John Pasden's helpful tips here (and be jealous that your company doesn't subsidize the purchasing of cool smuggled gadgets).

From Beijing-based techie Frank Yu: "iPhones for sale in Beijing. 1st Gen 8 gig iPhone USD 735. 2nd Gen 8 gig 3G iPhone USD 1,176. The Older iPhones rose almost 42% since 3G." [Source]