Unlocked iPhones Flood China

According to reports from China Mobile and market research company In-Stat, there are no fewer than 400,000 unlocked iPhones in China and there may well be many more than that. The giant mobile carrier reported recently, that at the end of last year, it estimates it had some 0.4 million customers connecting to its networks using iPhones and not a single one of these was locked to its network.

The figure equates to 10% of the global market for the iconic new Apple phones and helps to explain the disparity between the figures released by western operators for the number of new iPhone subscribers they have and the total number of handsets that Apple says it has shipped.  The catch is of course that the iPhone is not yet officially available in China, instead business opportunists have been buying them in the US and Europe and then unlocking them so that they will work on any network.

According to In-Stat, part of the appeal of the iPhone in China is that the market is used to using their handsets for entertainment. Chinese customers often use their phones for entertainment or Internet access, such as playing music or reading e-books. Apple's focus on games, music and web access makes the handset a very good fit for the market.

Chinese customers are also more likely to spend larger amounts of money on their phones, In-Stat says, despite lower average incomes. A full fifth of all phones sold in the Southeast Asian country cost at least Yuan4,000 each, or US$533.