The iPhone 5 had more than 2 million handsets sold in China in the three days following its launch.
"Customer response to the iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with our best first weekend sales ever in China," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in astatement issued on Monday.
It seems that iPhones in China cost $150 to $200 more than in the US because of taxes, tarriffs, fees, etc...
Despite the common misconception, China is actually a very highly regulated country with a massive bureaucracy and taxes and fees on everything.
They might still be catching up on the enforcement of environmental and workforce safety regulations, and wages might be lower, but less bureaucracy is definitely not a motivating factor for companies coming to China!
And folks are willing to pay extra for a real iPhone for several reasons. First, as a status symbol -- as the country gets richer, there are always folks who want to show that off.
Second, a real iPhone comes with support, all the latest features, etc... etc... -- I don't know how good the fake iPhones are, but I'd suspect that they're not that great.
Finally, the real thing feels different. Even if you absolutely can't tell the difference. If you're wearing fake jewelry, even if nobody can tell the difference, you know it's not the same as wearing real diamonds and emeralds.
A copy of a Picasso -- no matter how good and indistinguishable from the real thing -- is still a copy. If you know it's a copy, you're not going to pay millions for it.
I myself am a big fan of Diet Coke. I bought a six-pack of Diet Pepsi once and it tasted horrible. I couldn't drink it. Never again! Diet Coke or nothing else. But in a restaurant, where I get diet soda in a glass and don't know which it is, I can't taste the difference.
One of the evening comedy shows went out to see people's reaction to the new iPhone 5, and gave them an iPhone 4 (which they already had) and people STILL said the supposed "iPhone 5" was sleeker and faster and better.
Even without the improvements that came with the iPhone 5 (well, except for the maps), Apple's brand name is strong enough to make people want it. Emerging countries are no exception.
And yes, average salaries are low. But some salaries are already very high, many people are willing to save up for aspirational goods like iPhones -- and monthly telephone costs are lower, on top of it, so the total costs are not all that bad.
Well I may be wrong but I feel Apple i5 has not done justice for the hype it created before entering the market. I still use the 4s and I feel its good enough for me when you specially compare the i5 price along with the new features available on i5 compared to 4s.
in Shanghai, which is considered the most expensive city in China with the highest salaries, a monthly salary of 10000 RMB is considered to be really great, and not so many people get such money. In mainland China, the salaries much lower. So, how many people are ready to pay 4-6000 RMB to get a real Iphone if you can get a cheap fake that looks exactly like the real one?
Maria, that might be a reason, why Iphones are more expensive in Russia, where there are no Apple stores, but there ARE Apple stores in China, so I guess, if someone in Chine wants to buy an Iphone from the States, they would get it cheaper, otherwise it doesn't make sense- you can go to Apple store in China and get your own IPhone
"Still, the world's largest market should be a powerful pull to bring companies into China and even maybe relax prices a bit to get that market going."
When has the Chinese Market becomes the World's largest market?
That;s true Maria. However I came across this analysis of why the iPhone 5 may be is built just for the Chinese market:
"The iPhone 5, however, has been built to support the frequency bands that China Mobile adopts for its homegrown 3G networks, paving the way for the deal to be inked by early 2013 — a development analysts say could double sales of iPhones in China. Compatibility aside, the new iPhone offering also has features which appeal to the Chinese consumers, said Scott Sutherland, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities.What you get with the iPhone 5 are all these new features: Chinese language integration, social networking websites, Siri is going to be in Chinese, so again, they're making a big focus on the software functionalities of this phone," said Sutherland, which has a 12-month target of $885 for Apple's stock."
I have always looked at this picture from a differnet angle. I think its unfair in the first place to comapre the Iphone (a phone) to Android (an OS). its one phone against many phones (more than a 100) so even despite the encouraging numbers Apple seems to have accomplished, in reality NO other phone singlehandedly completes with the iphone.
Lower prices will probably be the most attractive motivator around the world, where 'status' is not such a big selling point as it might be in the U.S. or Europe. Still, the world's largest market should be a powerful pull to bring companies into China and even maybe relax prices a bit to get that market going.
One reason is that iPhones in China are more expensive than those in the US, so you get folks buying them here and shipping them to China. In fact, a woman was just Tazered for doing that:
And I agree that other phones are more popular, and are available in a wider variety of physical configurations, and at lower cost. But even if the percentage of people buying iPhones is low, the number of customers is high, so the total sales are high, even when you only count the iPhones sold through official channels. When you add in the high unit prices, you get Apple's reported revenue numbers.
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Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
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By now, you've most likely heard about the 3D-printed gun that Texas-based Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. But we haven't heard the last about the censorship war that began soon afterward.
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The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
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The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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