Yes, I am old enough to remember "ping pong diplomacy" and Richard Nixon's precedent setting trip to China. Old enough even, that I had been reading The Globe and Mail's Beijing correspondents' reports from China long before that. It's extraordinary how China has transformed its cities, it not itself, in the succeeding decades. What contemporary icon could be more symbolic of the technological revolution China has experienced than Apple's iPhone? And what a wonderful poster we have been given to document the occasion. There was never a Che poster on my wall but I would gladly create a space in my den for this one.
"Sixty years ago this month, Mao Zedong declared the birth of the People’s Republic of China, but it was Apple VP Greg Joswiak who said this was “an extraordinary day” for China. The iPhone has (officially) arrived. The most sought-after smartphone in the world has entered the most sought after market. More than 700 million cell phone users now have access to the iPhone without a trip to the gray market, if they can afford it. According to the Wall Street Journal, China Unicom is selling the iPhone 3GS for 6,999 yuan, or $1,024 without a contract. AT&T charges $699 for the same model without a contract in the U.S. Add in the cost of a service contract, and over two years a Chinese subscriber will pay around $3,000, approximately the yearly average salary. How many earnings reports and ever-increasing market share graphs will it take to convince skeptics that people are willing to pay more for a better product? More than 100 million Chinese use their mobile phones to access the Internet. Considering the iPhone’s superior web browsing experience, it’s easy to imagine millions of iPhones sold in China. Remember when Steve Jobs predicted that Apple would get one percent of the cell phone market in 2008? In China for 2010, one percent would be seven million iPhones, a third of what the company sold last year worldwide. Clearly, the revolution is at hand."
link: iPhone Launches in China
The price in China – about 1/3 more than in the Hong Kong SAR or North America – is a bit surprising, but we shouldn't be misled by the statement that the cost is comparable to the average yearly salary. Averages, in a country with such extremes of wealth and poverty, are virtually meaningless. I have no doubt the upwardly mobile young residents of Beijing and Shanghai will grab these things just as quickly as Canadians have.
