China’s government has finally approved the sale of iPhones with Wi-Fi, removing one of the last barriers for Apple to fully introduce the handset to one of the world’s largest mobile populations. Until now, Apple’s exclusive carrier in the country, China Unicom, could only offer the iPhone 3GS with WAPI, a homegrown version of Wi-Fi approved by the government.
The official announcement comes after the CEO of one mobile carrier said in March the iPhone would gain Wi-Fi in the near future.
Although Apple executives have been pleased by the iPhone’s introduction, China Unicom has wrestled with ways to attract users to the non-Wi-Fi handset and offset the large number of black-market iPhones purchased outside the country.
To spur use of its 3G network, China Unicom may have been considering reducing the iPhone’s price by $150, one report suggested in April.
[via 9to5Mac]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
