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Legal iPhones have been available in China since last Friday, but Chinese consumers aren't falling over themselves to buy the pricey smartphones. But don't let the low sales figures fool you. According to a report by Reuters, China Unicom has sold a mere 5,000 iPhones since their release last week. That's approximately one …

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  1. regviewer
    FAIL

    iPhone failed in China period

    5,000 iPhone units sold in China is very depressing. Even if they sold twice as many (10,000) or even three times (15,000), the people of China apparently are not impressed with the iPhone. Even after the next quarter, sales figures are only going to remain steady and slow or drop considerably.

    In fact, the iPhone has broken a new record....the "lowest units of smartphone ever sold in history" from a product launch release!

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    Everyone already had one

    Everyone who wanted an iPhone in China had already gotten one from HK or an import store already. I know people who've had them for a year over there. It's like selling a crappier version of a product to a saturated market.

    Badgers, because they're much rarer around Beijing than imported iPhones.

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  3. Charles Manning

    5000 official sales

    And how many brought in via direct imports?

    Considering the price tag, selling 5000 isn't really that bad. Sure you would not want to base a business on this alone, but you've got to keep things in context.

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  4. ratfox
    Paris Hilton

    The wisdom of stock prices

    "Cupertino's stock price doubled while the rest of the world slogged through the Meltdown mire."

    Not so. The stock of a certain company was multiplied by SEVEN since last December. The name of that obviously incredibly successful company? Palm.

    PH Icon... Palm... Ahem.

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  5. Nexox Enigma

    @ratfox

    """ "Cupertino's stock price doubled while the rest of the world slogged through the Meltdown mire."

    Not so. The stock of a certain company was multiplied by SEVEN since last December. The name of that obviously incredibly successful company? Palm."""

    Actually a seven-fold increase since December isn't terribly uncommon, since that was fairly close to the March bottom of the so-called mire. A fair number of (admittedly lucky) energy and basic commodities have managed around 700% growth since then. Impressive would be a 7x increase from May/June of '08. You're still pretty right though - PALM is up nearly 100% since May 1, 2008, while AAPL is only up about 12%.

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  6. Marvin the Martian
    Pint

    Don't forget the Chinese Relativism Theorem.

    "Whatever you are on about, approximately 1billion chinese don't give a monkey's."

    Nicely illustrated here.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    So

    about the same price they want for them here in Australia.... except the lowest contract tarrif is higher here ;P

    It amazes me that ppl here don't mind paying 4 times the price of an iPhone in the USA and still get screwed over with the cellular contract. I mean I know they jailbreak them (I don't know any iphone owners who haven't done this), but it's still a ripoff.

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  8. ratfox
    Thumb Up

    @Nexox

    Quite right, quite right. I was commenting on the article claim that the doubling of the Apple stock price meant they were doing well. Even though the stock of Palm gained more, there are few people who would claim it is doing better...

    In this case, I guess the augmentation reflects more the near-death experience Palm's stock had before the launch of the Pré, than the success they have now...

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