China Mobile wants 'cut-down' version of iPhone

Dear Apple,
We like your phone. It's cool. Frankly, a little too cool. So cool that people might want to use it with other carriers. So, what we were thinking is this: can you make it suck a bit? Ideally, if it could be suckier than the phones our competitors offer, then people who buy it would probably stay with us. OK?
Regards,
China Mobile

That shows a lack of understanding the consumer from China Mobile, if it's true of course. Chinese go for features and specs. They'd happily buy a B-brand TV for the same price as an A-brand, if the B-brand offers more "features" or buttons.

Funny thing is, that would even make the first gen iPhone more appealing to the market, compared to a weird stripped down iPhone 3G.

China Mobile's rival operator is China Unicom, not China Telecom.

That said, the reason they want wifi off is to avoid legal problems using the handset to organise protests etc, although this does seem odd given that you can buy plenty of other phones that are wifi enabled. I guess the problem is that the iPhone is so usable that suddenly it poses a real threat of going above the current level of using SMS to broadcast protests and taking it to a while new level.

Don't forget China Mobile is regulated by Netcom who are essentially the government.

No 3G is because the country does not have a 3G network- only a CDMA2000 network which is owned by Unicom.

Apple just doesn't get China. I have spoken to them at length about their China strategy and they only want to sell loads of iPods. They don't believe that they can sell their premium products there and to paraphrase Henry Ford, if you believe you can or you believe you can't then you are mostly likely to be right.

China Mobile's proposal is a sledgehammer solution to a small problem. Removing Wi-Fi and 3G is basically lobotomizing the iPhone 3G. The carrier is being control freakish which is an eerily familiar phenomenon with their government. Absurd!

Why would China Mobile wants make the phone for them less appealing than its competitors?

The 3G part is because China is currently running its own favor of 3G network, TD-SCDMA while the iPhone 3G uses WCDMA.

As for the Wi-Fi, it's for legal/policy reasons.

And to JJ,
the iPhone 3G is currently available on Apple Store Online (Hong Kong) for purchase, no lock, no contract.

I was in beijing this past summer and they do sell iPod touches there. I don't see why China Mobile doesn't want wi-fi on the iPhone 3G's, especially with free wi-fi in part of the city.

China Mobile want to make the phone less appealing? What is the point in that?

I really don't get why Apple doesn't just sell an unlocked version through all carriers, or just via Apple retailers. In my opinion, that would be the best way to solve this problem. Furthermore, they'd be cutting out the middle-middlemen: the purveyors of the unlocked iPhones.

Have to agree w/Chris. There's not much point to an iPhone 3G without WiFi and 3G. All the best stuff relies on one or the other.

So... basically, they want an iPod Touch...