When the iPhone was first released in China last year in partnership with China Unicom, it confusingly shipped with 3G but without WiFi.
The reason for the omission, of course, had to do with government censorship: the Chinese government’s Golden Shield Project requires wireless Internet devices to use China’s own WAPI standard, and up until recently, you had to choose between WAPI and WiFi.
That strange and arbitrary rule was actually changed before the Chinese iPhone was released, but by that point, Apple had already redesigned their handset to conform to the previous GSP regulation.
Luckily, it looks like Chinese iPhone owners will be getting WiFi soon. According to Silicon Alley Insider, Unicom Chief Executive Chang Xiaobing is saying that WiFi-enabled iPhones will be coming to his telecom’s customers soon. Existing customers will be compensated for their WiFi-less troubles… a compensation which will probably involve expanded use of Unicom’s 3G network.
It’s excellent news for legit Chinese customers… but with the Hong Kong iPhone black market still thriving, it’s unlikely to make the iPhone the success in China that it is in the rest of the world.
