Last August, China Unicom Ltd (CHU) announced a 3-year partnership to officially bring the iPhone to China. As predicted in July, the CHU's iPhone is sold with Wi-Fi disabled, in accordance with the Golden Shield Project. Additionally, 3GS hardware is still unavailable in China.

Despite these hindrances, handset and App Store sales have been doing well, AppleInsider reports. It's estimated that $1 million in legitimate app sales have been made this year, with a little over a month-and-a-half left in the quarter.

Black market phones are a huge problem in China, and it's been estimated nearly 2 million are in circulation, most of them jailbroken and running pirated apps. Apple hopes to sell 500,000 iPhones in China by the year's end.

Next year looks brighter: Wi-Fi regulations were relaxed back in May, and CHU hopes to have a Wi-Fi enabled model available soon.

[Via AppleInsider]

Reader Maik Lutze sent us some pictures from in front of "THE PLACE" shopping center in the CBD area of Beijing. As you can see, Apple is planning for a rather large event tomorrow! He notes the activation stations, with copiers for IDs and, sadly, Windows machines for activation. There's also a stage, presumably for live acts, and some very nice seats. If you're there tomorrow, tag photos on Flickr as "tuaw" (no quotes) or submit them to our Tumblr page.

Thanks for sending these in, Maik! His blog, in German, can be found here.

Hong Kong-based China Unicom released details today concerning its August announcement of a three-year deal to sell the iPhone. Sales of the iPhone will begin in October, dovetailing with its October 1st 3G network launch, and will be priced at approximately 5000 Yuan, or around US$730. The iPhone will be sold in both Apple retail stores and through Unicom's own network of stores, and plans for the iPhone will range from 126 Yuan to 886 Yuan, or about US$18 to US$130. There will also be a handset subsidy, depending on the chosen plan above 126 Yuan, which maxes out at 4253 Yuan, or about US$623.

China Unicom competes heavily with the larger China Telecom, which is believed to be in negotiations to distribute the Palm Pre.

Details here (in Chinese.)

Several news sources have been reporting that, at long last, the iPhone will finally make its way to China after Apple was able to strike a deal with China Unicom. However, according to CNW (English translation), the integration of the iPhone may not be so easy; in fact, the App Store, from which customers can buy supplementary applications for their iPhones, presents a rather large problem.

In China, telecommunications businesses must apply for a "value-added telecommunications business license," which certifies that the company is allowed to function in the country, and subjects it to any conditions or standards set by the government, which currently include a minimum registered capital of 10 million yuan and and established reputation to "provide users with credibility and capacity." So far, Apple has not taken any steps toward obtaining this operating license and thereby receiving the approval of the Chinese government, but not a big deal, right?

Unfortunately, the issue is not simple as a bit of paperwork. One stipulation of the license is that the government must be able to monitor the activity of the company. Apple's servers for the App Store are not in China, and so they do not fall under Chinese jurisdiction. If the servers cannot be monitored by the Chinese government to a degree of their own satisfaction, the terms of a telecommunications license will not be fulfilled.

This is not to say that the iPhone can't go to China at all -- if Apple removes the App Store option, their application is otherwise fine. There's an old wives' tale that a sort of Cro-Magnon iPhone once roamed the earth pre-App Store, and they weren't so bad. However, the availability of such a wide variety of apps is one of the main advantages of an iPhone as compared to other smart phones, and that would be a hard leg-up to lose for Apple. Combining this with the lack of Wi-Fi capability, Apple's grapple with China is likely far from over.

Thanks for the tip, David!

It looks like Daily Finance guessed correctly. Early on Friday, Apple and China Unicom Ltd (CHU) announced a 3-year partnership to officially bring the iPhone to China. CHU will buy the handsets from Apple on a wholesale basis and will not participate in revenue sharing. CHU is the 2nd largest carrier in China, while China Mobile is first with 498 million users. In fact, China Mobile is the largest carrier in the world and China is the largest market. CHU hopes to get a competitive boost with the iPhone.

As we noted in July, the iPhone will be sold with Wi-Fi disabled in China, in accordance with Chinese regulations (the so-called "Great Firewall of China).

If you're in China or plan to travel there, let us know if and when you begin seeing iPhones for sale.

[Via AppleInsider]

Daily Finance is reporting today on the iPhone's pending release in China. We've been reporting on this gradual deal for a while now. Back in July it looked like the deal might be delayed until 2010, but earlier this month, Apple's VP of iPhone and iPod product marketing Greg Joswiak (among others) traveled to China to meet with China Unicom.

Earlier this week, China Unicom confirmed with Reuters that the iPhone would be part of a media briefing they've got scheduled for this Friday, further fueling speculation that a release is imminent.

The potential of the Chinese market is huge for Apple. A population of over 1.3 billion and an advanced mobile broadband network (download speeds are superior to the norm here in the US) seem to be the ingredients for a very successful market. We'll let you know what happens.

It appears that China Unicom has been selected as the sole distributor of iPhones in China, according to a report in the International Business Times today. While the deal has yet to be finalized, the company has purchased 5 million WCDMA iPhones without Wi-Fi from Apple at a price of 10 billion yuan (US$1.46 billion).

China Unicom is to begin selling the 3G phones in September at company stalls in Carrefour stores, as well as at several large China Unicom retail outlets. The phones are expected to sell for 2,400 yuan (US$352 as of this writing) for an 8GB model and 4,800 yuan (US$704) for a 16GB iPhone. It's estimated that Apple's profit from each sale is about 1,100 yuan (US$161).

China Unicom faces stiff competition from black market iPhones, which are selling for as low as 400 yuan ($59). The International Business Times report notes that Apple made large concessions to China Unicom in order to enter the massive Chinese market. To give some scale to the size of this sale, Apple reported during the 3Q 2009 conference call with Wall Street analysts that they had sold a total of 5.2 million iPhones in the last quarter.

The International Business Times is reporting today that Apple execs, including Greg Joswiak, Apple's VP of iPhone and iPod product marketing, are expected to meet with China Unicom this week to try to cement an iPhone deal there.

The iPhone hasn't been available in China, at least officially, and Apple is eager to gain a foothold. China trade officials say there are one billion phone users in the country, and Apple would love to have an extensive bite of the market.

Apple already has telecom approval in China, and Apple has localized the iPhone software to work in Chinese.

China Unicom is one of the country's large, state owned mobile carriers. There have been some pictures of purported Chinese iPhones posted on Chinese websites, but it isn't known for sure if they are legit. Engadget noted last week that there appears to be a regulatory approval in place for the iPhone in China, complete with the requested Wi-Fi block from the Chinese authorities.

Apple said last April that it hoped to have the iPhone in China by next year.

Two reports from Friday indicate that the iPhone will soon make it to market in China, although the Communist government wants to make sure that users aren't free to use their newly-acquired Apple goodness to criticize official policies.

Gizmodo published an unconfirmed report that China Unicom may have a deal with Apple to sell iPhones with Wi-Fi blocked. Some of our readers might comment that China Unicom could just sell customers devices that have been upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0, since Wi-Fi doesn't appear to be working properly on many of those iPhones, but the Chinese government wants assurance that Wi-Fi is blocked on any iPhones sold in the country.

Why? To quote Gizmodo, "it's harder to sniff local packets than ones drifting through a wide-area network." What they're referring to here is the Golden Shield Project, known to many as the "Great Firewall of China." That's the Internet censorship and surveillance project run by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.

The Gizmodo post is in turn based on a story by Business Week, which is reporting that Apple applied yesterday (July 10th) to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for a Network Access License to sell the iPhone in the country. Business Week notes that Apple may receive permission to officially sell iPhones in The Middle Kingdom by the time of the Spring Festival in 2010, which occurs in January.

This might be obvious to most of us, but the WSJ feels it's fit to print: while Steve Jobs' reimbursed budget for his private jet has been fairly considerable over the past year or so -- $580,000 for a six-month period a year ago and $30,000 during a quarter period, the past few reports have seen the budget much, much lower. For the first three months of this year they didn't pay him at all, and for the previous six months before that they've only reimbursed him for $4,000.

What does this mean? Nothing, really -- while the WSJ points to it as evidence Jobs hasn't been traveling overseas to help bring the iPhone to China and carry out other big Apple deals, we've already known that Jobs wasn't involved much in the day-to-day business anyway; besides, it's hard to recuperate at home and fly around the world simultaneously. There are lots of other reasons for the budget to be down -- that $580,000 period would have been right around the manufacturing point of the iPhone 3G, and since most of the focus lately is on software, it's not like Jobs needs to be jetsetting off exotic plants to make sure production is on schedule.

And of course gas prices are back down quite a bit, and companies are under a little more scrutiny and pressure in this economy, so teleconferencing may be just as good as a plane ticket these days. Apple is still saying Jobs is expected back in June, and though these plane figures are interesting, the fact that Apple is still confident of his return says more about the company's future.

This seems like bad news for Apple, to say the least. A few Chinese websites are now selling $200 gift certficates to iTunes for less than a few bucks, which means that it's likely hackers have figured out the algorithm to determine gift codes on Apple's music store. As with most online codes, iTunes gift certificate numbers are generated by a formula somewhere -- figure out the formula, and you can generate your own codes (though it's of course tough to do and highly illegal).

The good news is that this might be an easy fix for Apple: they'll just have to re-figure the formula. The tougher thing to do will be to determine which of the old codes to honor -- they'll want to make sure to approve all of the cards on the shelves at Best Buy right now, while still trying to catch all of the illegal codes generated by hackers.

But then again, we're talking about a digital store that's already making cash hand over fist. Maybe even if one hacker on a shady website has figured out how to generate iTunes codes, Apple isn't too concerned about losing a few thousand dollars when they're still selling millions of dollars worth of music and content legitimately.

Talks with Apple to sell the iPhone in the Chinese market have stalled again, according to Interfax -- this time over the fact that China Mobile wanted to sell iPhone apps directly to customers, rather than through the App Store.

A source in the Interfax story said that China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou said that buying extras for mobile phones is different for Chinese customers, since many are accustomed to using prepaid credits rather than a credit card. Wang said that China Mobile would have to play some part in providing apps to customers, if only to fulfill this payment scheme.

China Mobile's "application shop," announced in November, would have sold apps for not only iPhones, but for Symbian- and Linux-based phones, too. Apple obviously wanted to sell iPhone apps through iTunes, as it does now all over the world.

Wang declared to Apple that "China Mobile should operate the application store itself in order to maintain its advantage."

It's unclear what this means for the future of the iPhone in China. China has other carriers, like China Unicom, and the lengths that Apple has gone to to please China Mobile might be reason enough to look for another partner. Rumors last year suggested China Mobile demanded an iPhone with a reduced feature set that some analysts later predicted could be the iPhone nano.

[Via MacDailyNews.]

Rumor sites are abuzz this morning with news from the Far East noting that two Taiwanese chip manufacturers will likely receive orders for a new "iPhone nano."

Taiwan's Economic Daily News ran a story suggesting that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation will win contracts for iPhone nano components.

MacRumors suggests that the device might not be headed for the United States, either: this device could be released first in China. American Technology Research analyst Brian Marshall says that the device is not being tested by AT&T. In September, rumors suggested that China Mobile asked Apple for a limited version of the iPhone, omitting Wi-Fi and 3G networking.

This comes on the heels of a screenshot sent in by tipster John, which shows a device labeled "iPhone nano" appearing in the iTunes Connect service used by App Store developers. Earlier, drawings of protective cases surfaced inside China's manufacturing community.

Shaking the magic eight-ball, all signs point to yes. While clearly not ready for Macworld last week, the same Economic Daily News report notes that a new iPhone device might be slated for a June release at the earliest.

Our sister site Engadget notes that iDealsChina found this rendering of a silicone case for a new iPhone-like device with a smaller form factor.

iDealsChina says the case is "in production," and has many 3D images of a variety of angles. The device may be unveiled during Macworld Expo next month. The site also claims the "iPhone nano" will have three "sensors," a camera, a "mirror screen" and no 3G. The device will allegedly start production on December 20th at a rate of 60,000 to 80,000 units a day.

This falls in line with unsourced rumors of a wireless product slated for announcement at Macworld. It could wind up being the magic $99 Walmart iPhone that we've heard so much about.

The look of the new iPod nanos was leaked (famously by Kevin Rose) earlier this year as a result of a supplier showing off renderings of new cases for the device. According to iDealsChina, "...once one company starts making a mold their information is passed onto other mold companies or accessory companies through a China underground network."