Apple Brings Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks to China

One of these days they're going to sell 20M of iPhones on an opening weekend and Wall Street will still be unimpressed.

2134: Apple sells 100M iPhones on opening week.
"Yeah, well that's cause they included Mars for the first time. No way they could sell that much if it was only Earth!"

Apple says that as a token of appreciation, the recent Chinese hit film The Taking of Tiger Mountain will be available for free to all customers in China for a limited time.

Hopefully it doesn't automatically download like the free U2 album did.

IBooks in mainland dictatorial China...
I wonder how the censorship system works, and if Apple has to be the enforcer.

If so, that would be a Bad Thing.

And many Chinese users wish iPhone would be sold in localised reasonable price tag.

Digital content will be easy to do, but yeah, iPhone iPad iPod are hardware.

Culture differs. That's why it's called culture. We often think Chinese products are cheap and below standards. And many of the export products indeed are of less quality.

Chinese population is diverse, as diverse of any other population in the world. Except the 'one percent' in China is about 15 million people. So there is a large amount of Chinese that do have money to burn.

But here comes the culture in again. This above class of Chinese has the habit to prefer long term business investments rather than making a quick buck. They'd buy land or buildings, in the first place not to get direct turnover through rental or commercializing them. They buy them for the children of their grandchildren. While building they will choose for over engineered structure, and skim big time on the finishing.

What has this to do with iTunes? I have quite some Chinese acquaintances and most of them got their iPhones as 'presents' from some family member. Of course their new gadget is not quite the long term investment their parents had in mind. Culture and customs do change but it'll need a 180 degrees turn before these new owners would swipe the plastic to buy content for it.

The iPhone is a status symbol and nobody sees whether you have a large portfolio of paid content on it. There's a lot of free apps and the pirate appstores will thrive as never seen before.

I do admit above point of view is just how I see it. By no means I pretend that I know better than any other person on this forum or beyond.

One thing is for sure though. The more Chinese iPhone users, the quicker we'll see new jailbreaks. Much quicker than before.

I can't believe so many people are surprised at the price of services is cheaper than US when converting from RMB to US $. They have to compete in the local currency with other local competitors as well as at a price that is suitable for the local economy. The average tv cable service in India costs about $2-$4. Are you all going to complain about it? How about the per capita income? That is way low too.

Also, movies are extremely cheap, and there are common movies in the US store & Chinese Store, at totally different price. (only cost about 1/5 to 1/3 in Chinese Store).

While I certainly do not encourage the pirated industry trade, things are differently in Asia.

The pirated movie industry is deeply cultured here. Shops selling pirated DVD's are easiliy found. And I'm not talking about small shags in the corner of a dark allay. I'm talking big, clean, well lit shops on commercial locations, often in the mall, positioned right next to an international brand boutique fashion outlet.

Prices vary on the amount of DVD's you buy. Starts from $0.7 if you buy just one, $0.4 if you take 100 pieces. Not all copies perform the same and there's dvd players available to test before you buy.

Movie distributors (the licensed, official ones) are retailing blockbusters on DVD's for about $2.5 in a simple case until $6 in full retail carton/plastic box. Available in the big branded supermarkets like Carrefour.

People over here do understand that buying pirated movies is outlawed. But law enforcement in this field is practically non-existent. More and more people are willing to buy the official stuff, and $2.5 is the price they want to pay. However the biggest drive for them to buy these is not because its legallity, it's because they're probably better quality and have less potential to freeze up in the middle of the movie.

iTunes in China with US pricing is suicide.