The Other News of China Unicom Eunuch(Wi-Fi less) iPhone: No iTunes, No App Store
On July 31st, 2009, Sina Tech presented some images of iPhone that will be sold through China Unicom in China. There are lots of English news coverage. But all the news focus on iPhone of not having Wi-Fi.
Hello? That's not the only news! The China Unicom iPhone does NOT come with iTunes or the App Store.
- One reason can be that iPhone(already) mandates anything over 10MB(lots of gaming apps exceeding 10MB) needs to be downloaded via Wi-Fi which won't be present in iPhones sold through China Unicom.
- China Unicom may have its own branded App Store and iTunes. As I argued in my presentation for Business in China meetup, Apple needs a China Unicom branded App Store to do integrated billing to succeed in China:
whatever the reason is, iPhone will not be attractive if users cannot download apps on-the-go. And of course, no one needs or cares about iTunes music store in China.
When I read many of English news coverages, they don't go deep to present the opinions of Chinese users who provide really valuable insights on whether iPhone will be a hit or miss in China.
Let me get some perspectives from Chinese users. Sina Tech has run a poll on whether users would buy an iPhone and how much(excluding the data plan) they'd be able to afford:
Here's the summary from comments made by Chinese users on the article:
- many people think iPhone becomes useless without Wi-Fi or the App Store. They even call it Eunuch iPhone.
- Some says the phone is the bandit (Shan Zhai) version of iPhone sold outside of China.
- People are concerned about the pricing of bundled data plan.
- There's also a uproar against Apple and iPhone manufacter Foxconn due to the suicide of a iPhone engineer.
As you can see, Chinese users have so far been very disappointed of the China Unicom iPhone.
It's still unknown whether the Wi-Fi hardware is removed from the iPhone, or the Wi-Fi function is just disabled through software(thus can be unlocked). Maybe Apple is working overtime to get iPhone the WAPI support which is mandated for all Wi-Fi-enabled phones in China. Apple must play by the rules set in China. As many international companies already know, China is very different.
