Apple is taking on “hundreds” of new engineers and supply-chain managers in China and Taiwan in an effort to speed up product development and offer a greater range of devices, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Cupertino company has reportedly poached staff from HTC and other rival firms to create new teams in Shanghai and Taipei.
Apple just set a record for the most iPhones sold in a quarter, but while the new iPhone 5ses and Cs are flying off shelves, a new scam is booming in China where broken old iPhones are cannibalized for parts to build complete units sold with a full retail price tag.
We’ve seen a few great Flappy Bird machines before, but nothing as incredible as this robot that flawlessly plays Flappy Bird using a web cam, a robotic arm made from an old hard drive, and the tip of a stylus.
It was created by two Chinese developers, Liu Yang and Shi Xuekun, who live in China’s Shaanxi province. According to the duo, it took four days to create the robot, which is probably 3.99 days more than Dong Nguyen originally spent programming the game himself.
Now can it beat Flapthulhu?
According to numbers from analyst firm IDC, Apple is now the fifth-largest cellphone maker in China, with 7% of the overall market share.
Apple jumped an entire 1 percent in the last quarter of 2013, based on the success of the iPhone 5s and 5c. This doesn’t take into account the impact of Apple’s deal with China Mobile, which began selling handsets to customers this January.
This week, Cult of Mac Magazine explores how Apple will reboot China, and why you, the aficionado, should care.
2014 is the year of the horse: seen as an auspicious symbol for swift success, it bodes well for Apple. The Cupertino company launches its deal with China mobile around the same time as the year changes over, a deal Tim Cook called a “watershed” moment.
Author and reporter Luke Dormehl delves into the factors that will shift Apple’s strategy there as it hopes to reach over 700 million potential fanatics and why this year we may begin to see the transition into “designed in California, built for Asia.” Hong-Kong based tech reporter Truman Au takes a look at local iPhone culture and why the gold iPhone is the choice of device – and matching cars, bags and shoes — for the country’s new rich.
As always, we’ll have the best in new apps, music, books and movies plus answers to your most pressing Apple-related questions from an actual Genius.
After years of speculation — and some incredibly drawn-out contract negotiations along the way — China Mobile finally began selling iPhones today.
Tim Cook was in Beijing for the launch, where he handed out autographed iPhones to customers, alongside China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua. Cook tweeted the following:
According to Tim Cook there is good reason to feel excited about the possibilities offered by Apple’s deal with China Mobile.
Cook — who is currently in Beijing ahead of the iPhone going on sale on the China Mobile network this Friday — said he is “incredibly optimistic” about Apple’s partnership with the world’s largest mobile carrier.
Cult of Mac has reported on Xiaomi — the multi-billion dollar tech company commonly referred to by the Chinese media as “the Apple of the East” — before.
Apple has opened an official online store on popular Chinese e-commerce gateway Tmall.
Run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tmall was launched in 2008 and hosts more than 70,000 merchants — including global brands such as Nike and Gap.
While Apple hasn’t officially commented on its Tmall store opening, an Alibaba rep has confirmed that this is an official Apple page and that it opened recently.
Everyone is so focused on the “will they, won’t they announce it?” Apple-China Mobile deal that it’s all too easy to forget about the success Apple is already enjoying in China.
According to technology market research firm, Counterpoint Research, Apple’s share in China’s burgeoning smartphone market leaped to 12 percent in October — with the iPhone now the country’s third biggest smartphone player.
Here’s a riddle to start Thanksgiving in style: what looks like an iPad mini, costs only $177, ships anywhere in the world, and runs… Android?
It’s none other than the Chuwi V88, and it’s a Chinese tablet designed to appeal to the would-be iPad owner on a budget — or at least a would-be Android owner, who wants people to think that they’re really an iPad owner.
Hong Kong-based Biel Crystal Manufactory Ltd — a company that makes iPhone screens for Apple — is violating workers’ rights at its Chinese factories, according to a rights group.
The Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior alleges that Biel Crystal demands that employees work 11-hour shifts, 7 days per week, with just one day off every month.
It would be next to impossible to ever label an iPhone thief “thoughtful” — but a recent story coming out of China took a turn for the strange when the thief in question painstakingly wrote out eleven pages of contact details and sent them to the owner of the iPhone he had pickpocketed.
According to research consultants Counterpoint Research, Apple captured 34% of the 2.8 million Japanese mobile phone sales this September, marking a sizable increase from the estimated 14% seen in both July and August.
The news is even more impressive when, as Counterpoint director Tom Kang notes, “This is the first time any handset brand has crossed the 30% mark in the last decade in one of the most modern digital handset market in the world, Japan.”
Apple is yet to confirm its iPhone deal with China Mobile — the one we’ve been waiting for since the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c were unveiled back in September — but that hasn’t stopped some stores from putting their iPhone posters up early. According to the company’s new 4G teasers, the devices could finally go on sale between November 9 and November 11.
Apple announced this morning that it sold an ungodly number of iPhones during the iPhone 5s and 5c launches this weekend – 9 million to be exact. The launch was Apple’s most successful ever, after Apple sold a record-breaking 5 million iPhone 5 units during its launch.
Along with the stratospheric sales numbers, Apple also announced that more than 200 million iOS devices were updated to iOS 7 since its launch on September 18th, making it the fastest software upgrade in history.
If you were hoping to order a new iPhone 5s from the Apple Online Store tomorrow and have it delivered to your door on Saturday, then you may be out of luck. The new handset just went on sale in Australia, and no matter which color or capacity you go for, every single model comes with a 7-10 business days shipping estimate.
Although you can’t preorder an iPhone 5s here in the States, Apple opted to allow people to reserve the iPhone 5s in China in order to better handle the frenzy of the coming launch day. Less than 24 hours later, everything but the 16GB Space Gray iPhone 5s sold out, and the gold model sold quickest of all.
Over and over again over, most of the pre-launch chatter about the iPhone 5c was that this was Apple’s “budget” iPhone, meant to help Cupertino squeeze into the mid-range, and especially penetrate the emerging market in countries like China by being released at a price around $349.
So imagine China’s surprise when it turned out that the iPhone 5c wasn’t meant to be any more of a budget iPhone than the year-old iPhones Apple has sold before. In fact, in China, an iPhone 5c will cost, in dollars, more than what an iPhone 5s would cost an American unsubsididized. And the Chinese are underwhelmed, to say the least.
The time ’round on the Cult of Casts: it’s finally confirmed! New iPhones are coming September 10th… we’ll run through our expectations for the big day and offer a bold prediction of a big 5S spec bump. Then, Apple’s about to do something no tech company has ever done, and… seriously Samsung, a smart watch?
And stick around for our new segment, CultCast Second Hour, and catch our conversation with professional video editor and visual effects artist Mike Gaines as we talk the pros and cons Final Cut X; what software the editing pros use; the best cameras for indie projects; and all the Mac gear you need for a solid video product rig; plus so much more.
Have a few laughs and get caught up on all the finest Apple stories in the land. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the unadulterated audio enjoyment begin. Show notes up next.
Late last night, a verified account for China Telecom popped up on Weibo and posted an advertisement for the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C… and it seems to imply that iPhone 5C is a much different design than we think.
In all likelihood, the iPhone 5S and 5C will be released in the United States on Friday, September 20th. What about Apple’s second most important market, though, China?
Well, if you’re a Chinese Apple fan, we’ve got bad news for you. You’re going to probably have to wait a lot longer for Apple’s new smartphones than the rest of us. A new report says the iPhone 5S and 5C won’t be released in China until November 28th.
The high cost of Apple’s iPhone means that it struggles to compete in China, with rivals like Samsung offering a whole range of devices designed for different budgets. But a low-cost iPhone 5C could change that.
One analyst believes that as long as Apple prices it right, the device could help the Cupertino company become the number one smartphone vendor in China, crushing Samsung on the way.
If you believe recent scuttlebutt, one of the reasons Apple is looking to release a gold iPhone 5S later this year is because gold is a color that sells really well in China. Is that supposition even remotely true though? If it is, it should be quantifiable.
Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt went looking for data to see if Chinese buyers really do like gold. Data’s actually pretty slim, but if the cars Chinese consumers buy are any concern, not only is gold not their favorite color… it’s only slightly more popular than puke green.
China Mobile may be the world’s biggest carrier with over 740 million subscribers, but it is yet to tie up a deal with Apple for the iPhone. That could change this fall when the Cupertino company unveils the iPhone 5S and a low-cost “iPhone 5C” for emerging markets, which are expected to include support for China Mobile’s 4G LTE network.
According to China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua, the company is already in talks with Apple, and “both sides are keen” to reach a deal.