Apple and China Unicom started selling the iPhone about 40 days ago. How many iPhones have been sold in China since then? In November, China Unicom said the iPhone would become China’s #1 smart phone. In mid-November, just days after the iPhone’s launch in China, Frank Cioffi of Apple Investor News said only 5,000 iPhones were sold in China the first weekend.
Even the typically bullish, and usually correct, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray called this “a disappointment” and lowered his China 2010 iPhone sales forecast from a range of 1 million to 2 million to 550,000.
Reports of black market iPhone sales varied widely, ranging from 1-million to over 3.5 million. Who should we believe? I’m going with China Unicom’s report in Bloomberg:
China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., the country’s second-biggest mobile-phone company, said it has sold more than 100,000 of Apple Inc.’s iPhone handsets after the carrier stepped up marketing of the device last month.
That’s an average of 2,500 a day (the first weekend sales were reported at 5,000 iPhones) and about 1-million a year. Not bad considering China Unicom’s iPhone price tag in China.
It will charge customers 7,999 yuan ($1,172) initially for the top-of-the-range version of the iPhone 3GS, before refunding all or part of the cost through the duration of the contracts.
For once, AT&T doesn’t look so bad.
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