Chinese regulators have approved a modified iPhone for the giant Chinese market, which uses the speedy GSM/WCDMA chipset but has no WiFi.
Why no WiFi? Hit the jump for an explanation (It’s partly business, partly snooping).
A listing on the China’s State Radio Regulatory Commission website (China’s version of the FCC) reveals the iPhone approved for sale in China is a GSM/WCDMA model — a next-generation 3G standard. It is a 16GB model, and features Bluetooth but no WiFi, according to Engadget.
Meanwhile, the iPhone will likely be offered by China Unicom, China’s number two carrier, according to a report by Sina Technology Zhiguo site (translated by iPhoneChina.com). Pictures published by Sina show a Chinese iPhone with a “ä¸å›½è”通†(China Unicom) carrier signal.
China Unicom boasts 135 million subscribers (AT&T claims 78 million wireless customers), but is China’s second largest wireless carrier, trailing state-owned China Mobile, which claims 471 million subscribers, which makes it the world’s largest carrier.
Vetern tech journalist Glenn Fleishman, an expert on WiFi, says the absence of WiFi is mostly for business reasons: the Chinese government is trying to protect its investment in 3G networks.
It’s to “preserve 3G revenue,” Fleishman says.
The Chinese government tried to get Apple to incorporate its own flavor of WiFi — WAPI. Apple refused, which is one of the reasons the iPhone has been delayed in China.
China wanted Apple to use WAPI mainly to force cutomers to use 3G networks, built at huge expense, instead of free WiFi in China’s ubiquitous cyber cafes.
“The Chinese government, which has highly intertwined interests with major corporations, wants to protect call revenue from VoIP,” Fleishman wrote on his blog. “An iPhone with Wi-Fi could be used with a VoIP app like Skype, or, if restricted, could be jailbroken and used with VoIP programs over both Wi-Fi and 2G/3G systems.”
There’s also a snooping aspect. It’s easier for the Chinese government to monitor internet usage over the cell network than it is over WiFi.
“You know a specific device on the network via a specific cell,” Fleishman says. “With Wi-Fi, there’s no central tracking mechanism, so if you use anonymizers or Tor or VPNs or whatever, you are much less trackable. The phone ID isn’t embedded into trackers. And hotspots are less regulated.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
