Apple eyes new stores in two Chinese cities as iPad suit continues

Opening stores in Shenzhen and Chengdu will be a big boost for Apple's China business, which currently has only five stores on the mainland, three in Shanghai and two in Beijing.

In April, Apple reported quarterly profit that almost doubled after a jump in iPhone sales, particularly for the greater China region.
But the possibility of selling iPads in Shenzhen could lead to more legal action after Roger Xie, a lawyer for Proview Technology (Shenzhen), told Reuters that if Apple tried to sell the popular tablets there, Proview would seek an injunction to stop them.
Apple and Proview are battling it out in the Higher People's Court in Guangzhou over the right to use the iPad trademark, which Proview contends it owns. Xie said both sides are currently undergoing court-mediated negotiations.

Apple's flagship stores are normally packed with people tinkering with the latest iPad or iPhone and its product launches draw huge crowds. But the company faces the problem of unauthorized re-sellers in less wealthy cities selling smuggled imports of its products.

Apple also faces a huge amount of piracy, a problem so pervasive in China that even entire fake Apple stores have been created where employees thought they actually worked for Apple.

Apple submitted documents on Monday to the Shenzhen government to open a store in Holiday Plaza, an upscale mall in the Nanshan district, according to an official with the Market Supervision Administration who would only give his last name as Ni."Apple is in the final stage and only needs to submit an environmental permit in order to gain approval," he said.



In Chengdu, in southwestern China, Apple received approval in late May to set up a business unit to handle retail sales and after-sales service, according to an official with the Chengdu Industry and Commerce Administration bureau.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. Apple's China website showed that the company was hiring Apple Store sales staff in Chengdu and Shenzhen

This article comes from:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/us-apple-china-idUSBRE85506M20120606

Apple In China: iPad OK’d, China Mobile Takes iPhone

Could Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), the world's most valuable technology company, be getting a new jolt from the burgeoning China market, its second largest?
 

Chances are the Cupertino, Calif.-based company will be able to start selling more products as early as next month, when it starts its fourth fiscal quarter.
Besides boosting revenue and profits from China, where Apple CEO Timothy Cook visited in March, the approvals could dramatically boost the company's prospects in China, where middle-class incomes are spurring consumer purchases. Market researchers say Samsung Electronics (Seoul: 5930) holds about 25 percent of Chinese smartphone sales while Apple's share is only around 7 percent.

The approvals could also assist Apple shares, which have fallen 14 percent from their all-time high of $644 set on April 10. At midday Monday, they were at $554.42, down $10.47. 

China's Telecommunications Equipment Certification Center said the new iPad is compatible with China Unicom's (NYSE: CHU) 3G wireless services. The approval removes the last obstacle to selling the products.

Apple sold 11.8 million iPads last quarter, bringing cumulative sales to about 55 million.The China regulatory approval came around the same time the same agency approved the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the No. 1 search engine. Google closed the $12.5 billion acquisition of the Motorola Android smartphone maker on May 22.

China Unicom had been Apple's exclusive iPhone seller until recently, when the company added China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL), the No. 3 carrier.Last quarter, China accounted for $7.9 billion of Apple's overall revenue, or 20 percent of the total. "We had an incredible quarter in China," Cook said, when he discussed results with investors.

But Apple's primary contractor, Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industries (Taipei: 2317), couldn't meet initial consumer demand: Before the Year of the Dragon began in late January, consumers rioted over iPhone shortages in Shanghai.Cook visited Apple retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai during his tour, his first as Apple CEO.

Besides boosting Apple sales, analysts believe the company sells the iPhone 4S at a higher margin than in the U.S. Apple's overall gross margin, or sales less costs of revenue, rose to a record 47.1 percent last quarter from only 41.4 percent a year earlier.

For earnings, that could also add more to Apple's bottom line. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek estimates Apple will report third-quarter net income around $9.38 billion, or $10.02 a share, compared with $7.3 billion, or $7.89 a year ago.

Meanwhile, Misek and other analysts expect Apple to refresh the iPhone 4S before long with a successor, an iPhone 5 or whatever monicker Apple decides, which will be an improved product with better displays and features, a higher retail price and resulting higher margins.

This article comes from:http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/348472/20120604/apple-china-ipad-iphone-4s-unicom-mobile.htm

Rumors fly about China greenlighting Apple iPad

 
According to a recent report at Patently Apple, China’s telecommunications bureaucracy last week granted a license for both 4G and 3G networks, which means Apple will be able to sell the latest iPad model on the mainland.

According to China’s Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center website, the license was issued for the Apple device on Monday. Without it, the company couldn’t legally sell the new iPad in the Chinese mainland.

However, in a followup, Patently Apple said that it wasn’t certain that Monday was the launch date for mainland China sales.

There has been a large gray market for the iPad in China and in late March several news services reported a softening of prices, dropping down towards the actual U.S. retail price. The gray marketeers will be out of luck when the iPad arrives. There have also been stories about fake Apple Stores selling fake Apple products.

I admit to a bit of deja-vu-all-over-again in these reports. In the 1990s, there were many reports of Apple and its proposed Mac OS licensing partners readying to make gains in the Chinese market.

For example, in the Feb. 26, 1996 issue of MacWEEK, I wrote about how Motorola and Apple were prepping Mac OS machines for the China market. It was going to sell machines in a joint venture with Panda Electronics Group. Of course, there was hope for millions of sales and new markets for software and services.

All of those plans were for naught. However, there’s no doubt that this time Apple with its iPad tablet platform will be the real deal in China — like every other market in the world.

This article comes from:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/rumors-fly-about-china-greenlighting-apple-ipad/13056