Several hundred people lined up outside a 40-foot cylindrical glass wall that contains the Apple logo at the 1,500-square-meter store in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China?s financial hub, before it opened at 10 a.m. local time.

Apple is expanding its network to reach more customers in China, where its sales trail Nokia and Lenovo, and said this week it plans ?many? more Apple stores for China. The company?s first China store opened in Beijing in July 2008.

Unlicensed distributors sold more than 2 million iPhones on a so-called gray market, according to Sandy Shen, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Shanghai. China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., the only authorized Chinese carrier offering the smartphone, sold fewer than 1 million, she said.

Source : Konaxis

Alipay and industry institution mobile Internet Great Wall today set up China’s first “wireless creditable business” coalition. Qiu Changheng when communicating with the media did not respond positively to news of cooperation with iPhone (mobile Internet), but he said Alipay indeed was in contact with the Apple.

The background of Apple and Alipay discussing cooperation was that Apple has been working with China Unicom, iPhone is officially sold in China. According to introduction, App Store abroad accepted mostly credit card payments, but in China credit card payment is not popular, Apple also noticed this problem, so it hoped cooperation with Alipay would resolve their payment problems.

QIU Chang-heng said that at present, Alipay have emerged at App Store, which was “the first payment method for Apple mobile phones”. On the other hand, App Store Web site has also released Alipay mobile client end and available for free download, which means Alipay application has got Apple approval.

According to Qiu Changheng the current mobile Alipay payment application was completely developed by independent team, and the only connection with computer terminal Alipay team is the “accounts system are totally connected”. Qiu Changheng believed that if mobile payment wanted a great development, the most critical two factors were open and credibility.

Half of Chinese people have no mobile phones and Chinese companies are beginning to roll out third-generation services.

Shipments of smart phones will more than triple in China by 2013 from 11 million last year, said an analyst.

China Unicom, which trails China Mobile Ltd. in the wireless market, may use the iPhone to narrow that gap.

Unicom had 141.1 million wireless-phone users at the end of July, fewer than a third of China Mobile?s 497.7 million. Unicom plans to invest 100 billion yuan in mobile services during 2009 and 2010, with most of the money going into its 3G network.

Source : Konaxis

Apple China did not offer any official retailing price for each of its products and accessories on the Chinese website, but now it has a clear classification and logo for each of them. However, still different from its global website, the ‘Order’ button on the webpage of the Chinese website is replaced by a list of dealers’ addresses. Web shoppers must still either phone the dealers directly or physically enter the stores and pay in-person.

Apple plans this year to open its first two self-owned stores in China, and both will be in the Beijing.

Source : Chinatechnews