SAN FRANCISCO — Since Apple won’t be selling the iPhone 6 in China for some time, early buyers of the smartphone have an opportunity to make a quick profit by reselling the hot handset on the gray market.
The first 50 people in line at Apple’s San Francisco store this morning appeared to be iPhone resellers — a pattern that seems to be have been repeated worldwide on the first day of iPhone 6 sales.
Apple may be halfway there when it comes to receiving the necessary regulatory approval for the iPhone 6 to go on sale in China.
As per China’s official Xinhua news agency, Apple has now received regulatory approval for the iPhone 6’s use on domestic frequencies, although it requires one other “critical license” before it is able to go on sale.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple’s delayed entry into China with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is the result of a disagreement with the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which tests all new phones before they may enter national telecom networks.
Massive iPhone 6 and 6 Plus preorders mean that Apple fans in India are going to have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the company’s next generation handsets.
Originally Apple said that the iPhone 6 family of devices would go on sale September 26, only for that date to quickly slip to October 17, and now again back to mid-November.
Apple’s expansion into China is one of the biggest stories of 2014, which is why it’s a surprise to hear that the company’s long-awaited iPhone 6 may not be available there at all this year.
According to a Bloomberg report — citing Chinese business paper 21st Century Herald — the delay is the result of Apple failing to come to an agreement with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The New York Times had previously reported that the iPhone 6 was being held up due to lack of approval from Chinese regulators.
Tools like hands-free kits and Siri might mean that you don’t have to have your face constantly buried in your iPhone, but for most people the reality is that using a smartphone suggests your focus is not entirely on the real world around you.
Tackling this problem head-on is a place called Foreigner Street in Chongqing city, China, which has installed a special walking lane for smartphone users — just as might be the case with a cycle lane elsewhere.
Apple is growing like wildfire in China, and Tim Cook expects the country to eventually overtake the US as his company’s largest market.
That’s why it’s a big deal that Apple has delayed the launch of its new iPhones in China. No explanation has been provided to carriers, although it’s suspected that there are still hurdles to overcome in gaining regulatory approval from the government.
Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field are no longer with us for epic keynotes and marketing blitzes, but an Apple reseller in China has come up with the next best thing: an Steve Jobs wax statue touting the iPhone 5s and Beats headphones.
The Jobs statue was spotted at an Apple Store on Taiyuan Street in Shenyang, China earlier this week by Xinhuanet, and they’ve got all the details right from the Levi 501’s, New Balance 991’s, and the trademark black turtleneck.
We’ve seen a number of Steve Jobs statues and memorials since his passing in 2011, but this is the first time we’ve seen one luring in potential Apple customers.
Here’s a look at the full display:
Apple is now using China Telecom’s servers instead of its own to power iCloud for Chinese customers. The switch took place on August 8th, and now the carrier is Apple’s only cloud service provider in China.
The decision is likely a direct response to the Chinese state-controlled media recently lashing out at Apple over national security concerns.
Apple has donated 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) to support relief efforts in China following the major earthquake in the country’s Yunnan Province earlier this week.
The 6.5-magnitude earthquake is the worst disaster to have hit the area in a century, and resulted in the deaths of 615 people. A further 2,400 were injured in the quake, while rescuers have evacuated 230,000 further people, who are now displaced from their home.
Apple has updated its Chinese homepage to reflect the disaster, and Tim Cook personally sent out an email to Apple employees noting that the company is eager to hit with relief efforts.
It may dominate 80 percent of China’s high-end smartphone market, but one place Apple’s not racking up supporters or sales is in the Chinese government.
In fact, according to a new list drawn up by the country’s National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Finance, Apple products are persona non grata when it comes to high tech devices that public money is allowed to be spent on.
The reason is security concerns, in the wake of increased fears about hacking and cyberspying. “When the government stops the procurement of products, it sends a signal to corporates and semi-government bodies,” says Mark Po, an analyst with UOB Kay Hian Ltd. in Hong Kong. “The Chinese government wants to make sure that overseas companies shouldn’t have too much influence in China.”
Samsung vowed to end child labor in its supply chain once and for all with its new ‘zero tolerance’ policy on child labor, but after coming down hard on Dongguan Shinyang Electronics this summer for employing under age workers, the Android maker has decided to just enforce 30% of its policy.
Apple is set to open a new brick-and-mortar retail store at the Paradise Walk mall in China’s Jiangbei District of Chongqing, according to Apple’s official retail website.
The store will open at 10am local time on Saturday, July 26, and will represent the company’s eleventh Apple Store in China: the first of several that will be opening in 2014 and 2015.
After the Chinese media called iOS’s ability to track an iPhone’s location a “national security concern,” Apple has responded with a lengthy statement detailing its commitment to customer privacy.
Yesterday China’s state-run CCTV ran a segment heavily criticizing the “Frequent Locations” feature in iOS 7 that records where the device has been in detail on a map. The implications of the report were that Apple was sharing the data with other companies and governments.
Today Apple responded to the allegations by saying that it is “deeply committed to protecting the privacy of all our customers” and that it has never created a backdoor for any government agency.
The iPhone brings untold billions of dollars of industry into China thanks to the manufacturing jobs it creates, but that hasn’t stopped the Chinese Government — through their state-controlled media mouthpieces — from calling the device a “national security concern.”
Why? Because iOS can track your location, which according to a China Central Television report, could be used to betray Chinese state secrets to the rest of the world.
Given that a large proportion of Silicon Valley is made up of sci-fi geeks, it’s no surprise that over the years tech has focused on bringing to life many of the once outlandish concepts seen in movies, TV series and comic books.
With the Apple Watch bringing several more of these to life -- Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio among them -- we thought the time was right to run down our 8 favorite sci-fi gadgets we’d love to see turn into actual products, as outlandish as some of them might be.
After all, you never know when Bill Gates is going to be scanning a blog, looking for ways to unload his fortune.
Scan right to check out the rest of the gallery.
(Picture: Dick Tracy)
The iWatch is coming. No one really know what it will do yet, but Steven Milunovich, UBS’ top Apple analyst, claims that if Apple has its way, you’ll use the iWatch mostly to send voice messages back and forth with your friends, like Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio.
Because voice messaging is so huge among smartphone users in China, Milunovich says sending voice messages will be one of iWatch’s biggest features along with fitness. And even though it sounds a little silly that voice messages would be the main draws for iWatch, he just met with Tim Cook who couldn’t stop talking about it.
Samsung wants to be one of the world’s top 10 places to work by 2020, but according to the latest third-party labor conditions report, working for the South Korean smartphone maker is still a horrible experience, especially if you’re one of its Chinese suppliers.
An audit of 100 of Samsung’s suppliers in China found issues like overtime, proper saftey gear and training are still prominent issues. You can read the full 69-page report on Samsung’s site, but here’s a quick rundown of the egregious conditions:
China is an important market for Apple, and while the company now has deals like the one with China Mobile that help distribute hardware in the country, that is only half the battle. According to new reports, Apple has recently been focusing on wooing Chinese appmakers to get them to develop for iOS.
“Two years ago there was no developer support in China,” Chinese developer Woody Wan told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “There’s been a significant improvement.”
According to the report, Apple has been taking various steps to win over Chinese app developers — including beefing up developer relations by allowing new apps to be approved in the country, opening up a new office in downtown Beijing where the China App Store is located, and building new Chinese-language-specific software to benefit developers. At WWDC this week, Apple held several sessions and social gatherings for programmers visiting from China.
You probably don’t waste much thought on where to plug-in your iPhone, but not using a real Apple charger has its disadvantages. Not only are they higher quality, and safer, but they also charge faster than a 5W Chinese knockoff.
Millions of cheap Apple copycats make it difficult to tell whether a charger is the genuine article and have been blamed on everything from iPad explosions to spontaneous electrocutions, but thanks to a teardown comparison from Ken Shirriff there’s one little flaw to look for that gives the dangerous fakers away.
Just look for the signature.
Apple is planning to rollout a new 8GB iPhone 5c in India starting this June in hopes to turn the country into it’s next booming market.
India was one of the few places you could still buy an iPhone 4 until last week when Apple pulled phone from the country. A cheaper iPhone 5c will aim to boost Apple’s marketshare in a smartphone market dominated by Sony and Samsung.
Apple’s continued Chinese expansion saw App Store revenue in China increase by 70% last quarter. That’s according to figures from a new Q1 2014 report from app analytics firm App Annie.
Key to this increase is the China Mobile deal which was announced at the end of last year, opening up Apple’s potential customer base to the 763 million users currently on the country’s biggest mobile network.
Apple has announced that the LTE iPad Air and iPad mini are now available in China. Cellular iPad models have been on sale in the country already, but today marks Apple’s adoption of the local TD-SCDMA network standard.
Here’s the full press release:
Sure, we’ll be seeing a host of fun things tomorrow on the internets, many of them having to do with new crazy Apple products.
Today, however, we found this slick little number from site AppleUser: the Mac Air Desktop, a slimmed-down version of the Mac Mini.
What’s great about this sweet little photoshop job is that it meets the requirement of any good April Fools’ prank–it’s totally something we’d want to buy.
The iPhone 5c flopped in the U.S. — and now figures released by Umeng, China’s largest app analytics platform, suggest that things aren’t much different in China.
In the fourth month since its launch in China, the colorful iPhone 5c accounted for slightly less than 2% of all active iOS devices on Umeng’s app analytics network.
By comparison, the iPhone 5s represented 12% of the market — while the iPhone 5 remains a consistent seller.
Apple stuck to its guns when it came to expanding into China: refusing to compromise its brand equity by selling lower cost iPhones to compete with low-end smartphone manufacturers.
That decision seems to be paying off, since a new study in China by app and mobile advertising analytics firm Umeng shwes that Apple’s targeting of affluent users has already seen it capture more than 80% of the Chinese smartphone market, who spend upwards of $500 on their phones.
Remember the recent bizarre Steve Jobs statue, depicting what looked to be the decapitated head of Apple’s late CEO?
Well, a new Steve Jobs sculpture may have it beaten in the weirdness stakes.
Urban explorer Darmon Richter found the above hexagonal blue sculpture — depicting Jobs’ profile against the iconic Apple logo — during a recent trip to Ordos City, China.