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China Unicom racks up Iphone 4 pre-orders

China Unicom racks up Iphone 4 pre-orders

SHINY TOY VENDOR Apple has racked up 200,000 pre-orders of its Iphone 4 in the glorious People’s Republic of China.

Second largest Chinese telecom operator Unicom has got all excited that pre-orders for Saint Steve’s Iphone 4 are in excess of 200,000. But let’s break that down a bit for you.

That Apple and Unicom even got the phone to market in China was somewhat of a surprise. As the INQUIRER reported, the previous Iphone tanked in China. “Business week even blamed the lack of sales for Unicom’s huge 54 per cent drop in profits. Apple previously had gotten told to get lost by China Mobile, which turned down Apple’s terms, giving Unicom a monopoly on sales in mainland China. Good for Unicom in the long run, perhaps, but bad for Apple because it could mean lower contract sales in China.

Then factor in the massive Chinese grey market. The Chinese have easy access to unlocked and no contract smartphones. That should have put off Apple but arguably it hurt Unicom more, in the short term.

Unicom started taking pre-orders for the Iphone 4 over the weekend. Unicom has a monopoly selling the model in China and will tie punters into a two-year contract.

These issues will continue to have a huge impact on Iphone sales growth in China, despite Unicom getting over-excited about its pre-order numbers. According to Reuters, Unicom has stopped taking pre-orders and shifted 60,000 units since Saturday, 25 September. Reuters also points out that it took Unicom over six weeks to sell 100,000 over-priced Iphone 3GS models back in 2009.

While the initial sales numbers are better than Apple’s previous results in China, it will always be hamstrung by the grey market, Unicom’s monopoly and over-pricing its hardware.

If the telecom operator was Unicom Wales and the numbers were a tally of pre-orders from the good people of Wales then we’d be impressed. But we’re not talking about a country with a population just less than three million. We’re talking about a country with 1.3 billion citizens. So that 200,000 Iphone 4 sales figure is tantamount to merely a drop in the bucket.

[Thanks: http://www.theinquirer.net]

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