China - page 21

When Apple comes up with an iconic design for an Apple Store, it often likes to replicate it elsewhere.

Just like the glass cube created for the company’s Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York has also popped up in other Apple Stores around the world, so too is the company reusing the glass cylinder entrance architecture design first created for its Pudong brick-and-mortar store in Shanghai.

The stunning 30-foot glass structure design will make a reappearance for Apple’s forthcoming Chongqing Apple Store, located in the city’s upmarket Guotai Plaza.

Tim Cook has told Apple employees he’s “deeply offended” by the BBC’s critical documentary Apple’s Broken Promises that investigated working conditions inside Apple’s supply Asian supply chain.

In an email obtained by The Telegraph from Apple VP Jeff Williams to the company’s workers in the UK, Williams said he and Cook are offended by the BBC’s suggestion that Apple broke promises with workers in the supply chain, and that no other company is doing “as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions.”

Williams also countered the BBC’s claims that Apple uses tin sourced through child labor in Indonesia, saying Apple is spearheading the movement to hold the tens of thousands of artisanal miners more accountable, rather than getting out of the country altogether.

If you happen to be one of our few Chinese readers, good news! Apple has just announced that LTE-equipped versions of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 2 will be coming to China later this week!

Apple is still trying to get a license for Apple Pay in China, but its new friends at Alibaba are bringing Touch ID payments to the mainstream in China today, with an update to the popular Alipay app that gives iPhone owners the power to make purchases with a fingerprint.

Alipay, which boasts over 300 million users in China, is the e-payment branch of Alibaba which just had the biggest global IPO ever this year. Tim Cook and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma met this year to talk about an Alipay + Apple Pay partnership, and the addition of Touch ID support is a strong sign that Apple’s mobile payments solution could be added in the future.

The minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China got a sneak peek at the Apple Watch during a recent visit to Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. Photos published by a state-owned website show Apple CEO Tim Cook demonstrating the device to Lu Wei, who also stopped by Facebook’s campus to meet Mark Zuckerberg.

Apple has announced that its China App Store, the second biggest in the world, is now accepting UnionPay as a payment option for customers.

As the most popular payment card in China — with over 4.5 billion cards issued to date — the move will make it simpler and more convenient for Apple users in China to purchase apps, since customers can now easily link their Apple ID with a UnionPay debit or credit card.

“The ability to buy apps and make purchases using UnionPay cards has been one of the most requested features from our customers in China,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, is quoted as saying in Apple’s statement. “China is already our second largest market for app downloads, and now we’re providing users with an incredibly convenient way to purchase their favorite apps with just one-tap.”

(Updated with Apple statement below.)

A new class of malware targeted at OS X and iOS is spreading like wildfire in China, according to new research by Palo Alto Networks. Dubbed WireLurker, the trojan hides itself in apps distributed through a third-party Chinese app store for OS X and side-loads itself onto iOS devices via USB.

What sets WireLurker apart from other malware is that it is capable of infecting non-jailbroken iOS devices, and it heralds “a new era in malware attacking Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.”

It’s been a great year for Apple in China, and to top it off the China Brand Research Center just released its China Brand Power Index for the year — placing Apple in the no 1 position over long-time rival Samsung.

While Samsung Electronics took home brand value prizes in both the TV and monitor categories, Apple roundly beat it in the all-important mobile category, which Samsung has occupied for the previous two years.

Tim Cook has described his desire to bring Apple Pay to China as “top of the list” in terms of priorities.

Cook was quoted on Friday, following an interview he gave with China’s official Xinhua news agency. “China is a really key market for us,” he said. “Everything we do [in terms of services in the U.S.], we are going to work it here.”

Here in 2014, news of a new Apple Store in the U.S. may be nothing special, but when you hear that Cupertino plans to open 25 retail stores in China in the next two years you sit up and pay attention!

According to Tim Cook, who was interviewed during his current China visit, Apple is set to greatly increase its retail presence in the country — from 15 stores currently, to 40 stores in 2016.

Cook also discussed China’s potential as the biggest Apple market in the world, saying that, “In the future China will become Apple’s biggest revenue contributor. It’s just a matter of time.”

Cupertino is once again shifting supply ratios of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus due to higher-than-expected demand for the larger handset, according to a new report.

The source of the increased demand this time? China, where the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus recently went on sale following a massive 20 million reported preorders.

The Chinese authorities are staging a “man-in-the-middle” attack on Apple’s iCloud service in an attempt to steal username and password information, according to anti-censorship watchdog group GreatFire.org.

As per Wikipedia, a man-in-the-middle attack “is a form of active eavesdropping in which the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them, making them believe that they are talking directly to each other over a private connection, when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the attacker.”

GreatFire.org first noticed the apparent attack when it became aware of the fact that certain connections made to Apple’s iCloud site in China no longer responded with a trusted digital certificate, thereby risking decryption.

Shanghai’s #Unicom store offers alteration service to enlarge pants’ pockets so to fit #iphone6 pic.twitter.com/uvjuTskGcn

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) October 17, 2014

Is your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus just too big for your skinny jeans? You’re not alone: a store in China is actually keeping a tailor on hand to enlarge pants for customers who can’t fit their new smartphones in their pockets.

When Tim Cook took time out of yesterday’s iPad and iMac keynote to discuss just how excited he was about the iPhone 6 coming to China, he wasn’t kidding: the market Cook has previously said could one day overtake the U.S. has been going iPhone crazy.

Having been made available for preorder on October 10, today marks the first day in which the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are available for (authorized) sale in China, being made available on all three major networks.

Apple is bringing the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to 36 new countries by the end of this month. The Cupertino company today confirmed that the devices will be available in Monaco on October 17 — the same day they go on sale in China and India — and then in Israel on October 23.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus may have shattered preorder records in the U.S. and elsewhere with a massive 4 million units reservations, but that’s apparently nothing compared to China.

Having had its arrival in China delayed to a lack of regulatory approval, preorders for the iPhone 6 family of devices have reportedly hit 20 million in the country since officially being made available on Friday.

Update: Initial reports claim that China’s top three wireless carriers have already accepted 1 million iPhone 6 orders in the first six hours of availability alone.

Apple’s initial failure to secure regulatory approval for its next-gen handsets means it’s been a harder than expected slog for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to make it into China through official channels.

Today, however, marks the occasion on which the iPhone 6 family of devices officially became available for pre-order in China, ahead of the handsets landing in stores Friday, October 17.

“We are thrilled to bring iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our customers in China on all three carriers at launch,” Tim Cook said in an official Apple statement. “With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus customers will have access to high-speed mobile networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom for an incredible experience.”

Apple has made it obvious that it’s making a big fashion play with the Apple Watch.

After inviting the fashion industry press to the product’s unveiling and staging a one-day showing during Paris Fashion Week, the Apple Watch is getting its own Vogue cover. Well, Vogue China, to be specific.

China may be getting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus a little later than many parts of the world, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed down demand any.

Ever since being made available for preorder late last week, upwards of 4.85 million iPhone 6 family handsets have reportedly been ordered, according to the Chinese live tracking website JD.com.

Forget those ridiculous rumors that the huge quantities of smuggled handsets had all but killed iPhone 6 interest in China! According to new reports coming out of China, both retailers and carriers have taken in a massive 2 million reservations just six hours after putting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on earlier-than-expected pre-order.

It was previously announced that customers would be able to place orders for the iPhone on Friday, October 10, with the devices finally going on sale one week later on October 17.

However, that edict appears to have been ignored, since all three major Chinese carriers — including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom — are already taking orders.

As thousands of protesters flood the streets of Hong Kong demanding a democratic election, the Chinese government is reportedly using sophisticated malware to spy on not only Android devices, but iOS devices as well.

But don’t worry about China peeking at your Snapchats. There has yet to be a widespread instance of iOS malware in the wild, and this particularly “advanced” trojan still requires a tremendous amount of complicit behavior on the victim’s part.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will officially be available to pre-order in China from Friday, October 10, ahead of their launch a week later, Apple has confirmed. The news comes just hours after the Cupertino company’s new smartphones finally received approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Due to challenges receiving regulatory approval, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has yet to make it into China through official channels.

That’s not enough to stop the New York Times running a story claiming that scalpers have already exhausted demand for Apple’s next gen handsets in the country that may one day overtake the U.S. in terms of iPhone sales, however.

The article notes that, despite the fact that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will not officially go on sale for a few weeks (October 10, according to a leaked memo), the gray market has “already dried up” — with wholesalers who smuggled tens of thousands of iPhones into the country being forced to “[slash] prices to move inventory.”

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is a 10 million unit selling wrecking ball — and Samsung is running scared.

Trying to boost its falling mobile sales, Samsung announced on Wednesday that its new Galaxy Note 4 smartphone will go on sale in China and South Korea as early as this Friday, with the handset available on all mobile carriers in both countries by the end of the month.

For those keeping track, that’s before much of the rest of the world, including the U.S.

Why are China and South Korea getting Samsung’s flagship handset before nearly everyone else? Because the iPhone 6 isn’t available in these markets yet, which has caused a mad dash for the South Korean company to try and get in there first — particularly since the massive iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has now neutralized Samsung’s big-screen differentiator.

The iPhone 6 may be on the verge of officially going on sale in China, according to a top government regulator speaking on Tuesday.

As one of Apple’s most promising markets (which may one day even overtake the U.S. in terms of sales), the disappointing lack of iPhone 6 in China was the result of Apple incurring challenges receiving regulatory approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).