Wordpress is open now, so feel free to ask away, until it goes all YouTube again.

I don’t see WAPI being on the agenda to be honest. None of the other providers bother either. Much like TD-SCDMA home grown 3G, its a non-starter out of the gate.

As people well know (and pointed out above), China Mobile is eager to dump 3G despite being government mandated, and move to something more viable. Hence the 4G rollout.

I still think that the market is saturated – or at least liberally watered demand has been met by the grey market. Apple has got stats on this – 3G sales in HK bypass actual usage by a wide margin.

If this was announced a year ago, great.
As is is, too little too late.

Also don’t forget that Unicom’s network is widely perceived to be inferior to the incumbent China Telecom network. Most users are all to aware of this, especially in the larger cities.
While Chinese are price sensitive (most Unicom users are so for cost reasons), they aren’t uninformed. Unicom also has a reputation for being more spammy network wise than China Mobile.

The other death blow is the likelyhood of no wifi (although this will likely be easily resolved within days by the good people at TGBus or WeiPhone)

A quick straw poll of my staff when asked about getting an iPhone from Unicom with no wifi or a Grey market version with wifi had results unanimously going with Grey Import.

Unicom will probably offer some kind of 3G enticement deal to counter this though, which might work, especially if they can tie people up to a contract.

Another point is that strictly speaking “subsidies” are illegal here in China, although that doesn’t stop China Telecom from doing that on occasion. If Unicom did something like that, and China Telecom decided they were being too successful, expect to see some government interference.

Of course, all bets are off when Apple releases their new phone as is expected come summer time.

Again, this is all opinion, rather than “fact”, but I’ve been hear long enough to read the smoke signals.

Lawrence.

While Wifi is an issue, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Apple will develop standards that meet the China’s homegrown WAPI (a proprietary encryption and authentication solution for WiFi). The downside is that WAPI likely contains backdoors to allow government surveillance of Wi-Fi traffic. In other words, status quo.

When the iPhone is officially launched in China (probably Summer 2009) I would expect to see new models with new features that will entice new buyers … I do not believe the market is saturated. I also expect that China Unicom will offer iPhone with a modest subsidy. This should make the iPhone 3G through China Unicom more competitive versus the grey market.

The current set of new users will be ones that are replacing older sets (2G / lost phones). Pretty much anyone who wants/wanted an iPhone has one in China. There is room for growth, but the initial set of sales will be more sluggish due to the saturated market.

iPhones are already widely available in 1st and 2nd tier Chinese cities.

China already has close to 1 million Apple iPhone users (possibly more, but uncorroborated).
99% of these users are using jailbroken handsets.

There is already a huge community support for iPhones, which is good, although quite a lot seems to be around distributing hacked applications – users are quite adept in downloading and installing stuff from popular sites like WeiPhone.

All grey import phones bought currently will be pre-hacked, and are usually loaded up with a selection of games / apps.

Apple has already shot themselves in the foot here with regards to iPhone – most users hear stories about upgrading breaking their phone, so will be loath to upgrade on official units.
I could go into this in more length, but suffice to say, its not good for their brand image.
They (Apple) already have a terrible image in China with regards to support for Apple equipment as it is. This impacts things like Grey Import vs “Official”. In most cases Grey Import goods get better service from the vendor than Apple provides with a real unit.

Its likely that any iPhone released in conjunction with Unicom will be locked to carrier.

A worrying point is the lack of Wifi on the phone in the listings on Unicom’s site. While this isn’t unprecedented, it won’t bode well for sales.

Given the choice between an “Official” one missing WIFI or a grey import which has all the features, most people will purchase the one which offers all the features.

Currently people can either buy a grey import phone from US – cheaper, but not easily upgradable by end users/ or requires a Piggy Back Sim, or a slightly more expensive unlocked Territory iPhone – HK, Italy, and NZ sourced phones are easily bought here.

Another issue (as you’ve covered), is regionalizing the phone.
Youtube is a non-starter here obviously.
Youtube just doesn’t work here unless you’re prepared to wait 20 minutes for a 3 minute clip to load. Regionalizing with Youku or Tudou would be the smart move, and an even smarter move on Youku or Tudou’s part.

I would assume either company is in talks right now about this. If not, they’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Issues are going to arise however if the iPhone has no wifi, and they don’t have unlimited GPRS/3G plans. Users will be loath to use the iPhone networked apps for anything other than essential use (eg mail) if it has a real time effect on their pockets.

Apple has been ramping up Chinese App store work over the last month – this can be seen by the “sudden” appearance of Chinese apps in the top 25 featured apps on occasion when browsing from China.