After a period of regulatory approval and other hurdles, the latest Apple products are ready to hit the Chinese market in December. I’m talking about the New iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone 5. These are the WiFi only versions we’re talking about, so no cellular version just yet. They will hit the market on December 7th and the iPhone 5 will be in stores a week after that.
The iPad Mini and iPad 4 are debuting next week, apparently and this is a big deal, since China is one of the fastest growing markets for Apple. They have a 70% market share here, although on the smartphone area Android dominates with 90% of the market. The iPhone 5 recently got regulatory approval to operate on two carrier networks, China Telecom and China Unicom. This makes the iPhone 5 the fastest rollout yet till now and with China the total number of countries where the handset is available in 47 countries.
Apple announced back in September that they intend to reach 100 countries by the year end. The iPad Mini and New iPad will have reached 42 countries after about 5 weeks, another good performance. China is the fastest growing region when it comes to the update of iOS and Android devices. By early 2013 China will pass US as the biggest country when it comes to the number of active iOS and Android units, which makes it a very important market.
