[/caption]In the famous fan favorite movie, “The Lost Boys,” the Keifer Sutherland’s Dracula character asked the question: “Can a billion Chinese be wrong?”
If the Chinese take to the iPhone and the iPad like how we in the West have done, then perhaps, Apple will be happy to parrot Sutherland’s line mentioned above.
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has opened its second store in Shanghai. Although not as crowded like when an Apple product is about to come to market, so did the Chinese lined the street in Pudong district for the opening of the Apple store.
Apple is playing catch-up in China because it rivals, Nokia and Lenovo have bigger footprints in China. Apple has pledged to open hundred of stores in China, coveting a huge share of the Chinese market.
Like many of Apple’s customers in the West, many of Apple’s vendors are the top of the Chinese society – some 80% of Apples vendors in China have university degrees and are lawyers and teachers.
Apple products are being sold without authorized vendors; according to a Sandy Shen, some two million iPhones were sold on the “gray market,” (China’s version of the black market), while the sole authorized Apple vendor, China Unicom, sold less than a million.
The newest iPhone can be had at the authorized Apple vendor for 6999 Yuan, but it could be had for far less on the Chinese black market (Grey Market). This is the problem Apple faces, especially in a place where the enforcement of intellectual property rights are not a priority for the Chinese law enforcement authorities.
Apple may want to see and emulate what it is Lenovo and Nokia have done to have such large lucrative footprints in China. Nokia, the leader in smart phones sales in China, has some 100000 outlets in China, while Lenovo, the leader in computer sales in China, has some 10000 outlets.
It is projected and expected that there will be a 50% increase in cell phone shipments to China - with all those outlets in China, they underscore how important to the bottom line that China is to tech manufacturers, even Apple.
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