Neil HughesAnalyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities is continuing his tour of the Far East, and on Monday provided investors an update on his second day in China. Though he noted the iPad and 11-inch MacBook Air, in particular he found the iPhone 4 to be Apple's most difficult product to purchase.
He said wait times are around two months and carrier China Unicom is unable to fulfill about a third of preorders. Apple's interest in the market is seen as positive because of the growth opportunities in China.
"Most of the carriers agree that the high-end smartphone opportunity in China is approximately 100-125 million subscribers, which we view as the addressable market for the iPhone," White wrote.
The iPhone 4 debuted on network China Unicom in September, and posted strong sales of 100,000 in its first four days. Since then, limited supply has led to extensive scalping, which forced Apple to require reservations for iPhone buyers.
Though China Mobile is not an official iPhone carrier, White said he believes it has the most iPhones on its network with about 2 million. To help capitalize on that, the carrier plans a tenfold increase in mobile application developers in the first quarter of 2011.
In November, China Mobile set up a website to help users trim their SIM card to fit inside the iPhone 4, which requires a microSIM. The carrier indicated to White it has plans to create a SIM card that will work with the iPhone 4.
Finally, Chinese CDMA-based carrier China Telecom is also viewed as a potential partner for Apple. White said he believes the company is "well positioned" to begin selling the iPhone in 2011.
The carrier has been rumored to be in talks with Apple since October. Apple is expected to build a CDMA iPhone for launch on the Verizon network in the U.S. in early 2011.
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14 Comments
There are worse problems to have than too much demand! The continual cry from troll was always Apple won't sell anything in China bla bla bla ... Once they ramp up production the sky seems to be the limit.
Apple aren't struggling in China. They are struggling almost everywhere. Here we have a month waiting for iPhone 4 and that's when you're lucky.
We haven't had any iPhone 4's for weeks now in Australia, we get 40-50 enquiries every day.
We have plenty of Nokia N8's, Galaxy S's and Desire HD's and have no choice but to cross sell to those.
When you have targets to meet and bills to be paid not having iPhones obviously doesn't give us much choice but to sell something else.
Apple aren't struggling in China. They are struggling almost everywhere. Here we have a month waiting for iPhone 4 and that's when you're lucky.
Where is here?
Interesting... I had assumed that when the iPhone went to 24 hour availability on the US Apple Store that it meant the supply problems were resolved. I guess not. Maybe Apple has to give AT&T first dibs on phones?
Apple is generally so good about getting supply to meet demand after a few weeks at most. The fact that the iPhone 4 was introduced in the summer and they still haven't caught up to demand suggests that they were completely caught off guard by the demand for this product. I don't think I've seen Apple have this much trouble responding to demand for a product since they introduced the Mac LC and IIsi (although that situation was actually far worse)