China: a game changer for the iPhone App Store?

 

china_iphone

Friday was a big day for Apple. Finally the iPhone made its official debut on the BIG Chinese market (1.3 billion people).

The Apple store wasn’t overcrowded and the event didn’t quite had the impact we are used to. However, with 1hour before the official launch reporters in Beijing counted nearly 300 customers queued up to buy it, according to ChinaNews.com .

iPhone launch China

When I heard this news I started to wonder if China, the world’s largest cell-phone market (with more than 700 million subscribers) will have the power to influence the way developers build their iPhone application?

We must consider that every new market has its own needs and culture, thus it will be interesting to see what new apps will be developed for this particular one and how the request will influence the offer.

Another question is how will this affect the Smartphone race and how successful will the iPhone be in China? Will the glossy UI win the hearts of the Chinese people? If so, maybe the predictions made will suffer a little bit and iPhone will have the biggest Smartphone market share by 2012. Do you think is possible?

The third interesting perspective is to see how the Wi-Fi restriction will affect the apps market. Due to restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, the iPhones won’t have a Wi-Fi receiver. The only way to connect to internet is via the operator connection which I think will impose some restrictions like…no VoIP calls .

Despite the VoIP calls restriction, you can still use Nimbuzz to chat and interact with all your friends from Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, Facebook  and many more popular IM communities and social networks  ! And the BEST part is that you can download Nimbuzz translated in Simplified Chinese so it will be really easy to use and understand. Remember to recommend it your friends too !

Are you a new happy owner of the iPhone bought from China? Let us know if it meets your needs and how would you change it?

Andrei Piftor (Andi) on November 4th, 2009 in News, iPhone

15 Responses to “China: a game changer for the iPhone App Store?”

  1. Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Friendfeed by Nimbuzz: China: a game changer for the iPhone App Store? http://bit.ly/D0aqn...

    uberVU - social comments November 4th, 2009

  2. I’d rather buy a 3GS in Hong Kong, which is cheaper, no WIFI restriction and no netlock.

    Anyway, the main reason not to buy the iPhone in Mainland China would be the WIFI restriction.

    Kev November 4th, 2009

  3. Why don’t nimbuzz get translated to Traditional Chinese too!

    Jason Yip November 5th, 2009

  4. If anyone wondering here on why iphone wasn’t a big hit in china…

    because iphone were not OPTIMIZE for Chinese handwriting. A complex chinese character can be easier with stylus.

    so,
    don’t expect to see iphone will break china soon.

    cycnus November 5th, 2009

  5. I am chinese,i used nimbuzz,but it can not support QQ.
    i hope it can support qq in the future.

    Joe Liao November 5th, 2009

  6. @Joe Liao
    Thanks for your suggestion.
    Indeed we do not support QQ as a community.
    We will study the possibility of adding it in the future.
    Regards

    queralt escrich November 5th, 2009

  7. i do not agree with cycnus it is very easy to write chinese charactars on the iphone either way with handwriting or pinyin.

    the only reason why the iphone maybe won’t get a breakthrough in china for china unicom is because the consumers can buy grey market HK and/or new zealand iphones from any electronic shops in the country with no netlock and no WIFI restriction and the prices are nearly the same.

    i bought my hongkong iphone 3G last year for 4800rmb in a small electronic shop in beijing. if you don’t care about the guarantee, there is no reason to buy a netlocked and wifi restricted phone from china unicom.

    Kev November 5th, 2009

  8. Thanks for your comments guys!

    I’m really happy to read your opinion on this subject, great info ;) .

    Cheers

    Andi Piftor November 5th, 2009

  9. @Jason Yip
    Thanks for your suggestion!
    We are considering translating our application into Traditional Chinese as well!
    Regards

    queralt escrich November 5th, 2009

  10. Quote: I started to wonder if China, the world’s largest cell-phone market (with more than 700 million subscribers) will have the power to influence the way developers build their iPhone application?

    >Yeah, developers will have to learn Mandarin!! lolol ^_^

    Anonymz03* November 5th, 2009

  11. @Anonymz03* :) ))

    Andrei Piftor (Andi) November 5th, 2009

  12. I’m Chinese, I used nimbuzz. But now, cannot sign in facebook! : (

    Ratec November 6th, 2009

  13. @Ratec
    We are having some issues with Facebook at the moment, please check our Blog post about it:
    http://blog.nimbuzz.com/2009/11/06/facebook-chat-on-nimbuzz-work-in-progress…/
    Regards

    queralt escrich November 9th, 2009

  14. [...] few days ago we wrote about the iPhone launch in China and so far Apple have sold 30,000 units (since 30 October).  We look forward to seeing the first [...]

    Dell Mini 3i – the first Android mobile from Dell November 17th, 2009

  15. My brother would fall in love this post. We were recently speaking about this. lol

    Computer News January 4th, 2010


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