China Mobile to sell cut-down version of the iPhone? I don’t think so
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Sep 26, 2008 at 7:00am
File this under “ain’t-gonna-happen”: The South China Morning Post is reporting that China Mobile is expected to officially launch the iPhone on its network soon, but with some of the functionality removed to comply with Chinese regulations.
The Post, citing a report from the Daiwa Institute of Research said that the 3G and Wi-Fi services would be disabled on the Chinese model. Personally, I can’t imagine Apple would allow this.
China Mobile has purportedly tallied at least 400,000 jail-broken iPhones on its network today. Still, MocaNews says that one reason it may not want 3G as part of the phone is because the carrier is widely expected to build out its eventual 3G network using the Chinese developed TD-SCDMA format, and by disabling the 3G functionality the iPhone would less appealing to users who might buy the handset and unlock it to be used on the expected W-CDMA network from China Telecom.
What’s more the In-Stat thinks the iPhone will do well in China. The smartphone market in China is driven by people using their phones for entertainment purposes, such as music players, cameras and video and to access the mobile Internet, like IM, e-book, and games, the company says. The research firm also estimates that 20 percent of handsets sold in China last year cost more than 4,000 RMB (US$533), which would put the potential iPhone market at 28 million users.
May be. But does anyone think CEO Steve Jobs would allow this? Nope. With Apple, it’s their way or the highway.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
