Apple (AAPL) iPhone Launch In China Imminent, Risky
Apple (AAPL) is about to launch its iPhone in China, the largest cellular phone market in the world. According to The Wall Street Journal, China Unicom (CHU), the second largest cellular carrier in the country will be Apple’s partner. The…
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Apple will have to contend with piracy as does every other technology companies that does business on the mainland.
There are already a number of “knock off” versions of the iPhone in China and consumers can buy “unlocked” Apple handsets that work on some local networks. The presence of counterfeit handsets is almost certain to rise as Apple increases its presence in the market.
The Chinese market is attractive to Apple because it has almost 700 million cellular subscribers, but the US company should not expect a level competitive playing field in the world most populous country. The largest carrier in China, China Mobile (CHL), is partially owned by the government and it will almost certainly launch its own smartphone product to compete with Apple. That product will probably have features nearly identical to those of the iPhone. Those features may be so identical that they would be prohibited by law in the US.
Apple may find, as Microsoft (MSFT) and other US tech companies have, that China is big place but not a profitable one to do business.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.