The Million Cracked iPhone March

Posted on July 11, 2008
Filed Under China Business, China Distribution, Mobile |

Chinatzone, quoting Wireless Asia, reports:

Around 1 million iPhones have been illegally unlocked and brought into China to work on China Mobile’s network, a telecoms analyst told China’s Interfax news agency this week.

Kevin Li, an analyst with In-Stat China, says the number of unlocked iPhones potentially in use in China has more than doubled in the last six months (from around 400,000 in December 2007), a figure that does not include iPhones adapted to work on rival mobile network China Unicom.

According to official statistics, Apple had shipped 5.4 million iPhones globally by the end of first-quarter 2008, which means the 1 million illegal China Mobile devices could account for a sizable proportion of all iPhones in circulation.

It’s amazing to think that just under 20% of all iPhones are in China. Despite the stacks of them in the computer malls and their ubiquity amongst the mobilely hip, I have difficulty accepting that a million of them slipped into China in people’s luggage.

In-Stat has been tracking this for a while, reporting 400,000 in February for the end of 2007 and 600,000 by March 2008 (see Alley Insider for the story). That would mean 400,000 more in the last three months or so.

There’s either one hell of a smuggling operation going on or someone other than me has realized that talking about iPhones in China is a great way to get noticed.