The long battle to bring the iPhone to China looks to be finally settled, but two major features have been lost in the struggle. According to The South China Morning Post, citing a report from the Daiwa Institute of Research (via Cellular-News) China Mobile will be releasing a version of the iPhone which lacks both 3G and WiFi in order to comply with Chinese regulations. With over 400,000 jailbroken iPhones currently running on China Mobile’s network, the availability of any version of Apple’s iPhone could seriously boost sales. So why exactly would China Mobile not want to include 3G or Wifi in their stripped-down version of the iPhone? MocoNews has provided the following insight on the matter,
One reason it may not want 3G as part of the phone is because the carrier is widely expected to build out its eventual 3G network using the Chinese developed TD-SCDMA format, and by disabling the 3G functionality the iPhone would less appealing to users who might buy the handset and unlock it to be used on the expected W-CDMA network from China Telecom.
No information on a release date or pricing has been given at this time. An interesting piece of information about the demographics of cell phones buyers in China is that 20 percent of handsets sold in China last year cost more than 4,000 RMB ($533 USD), which gives Apple a potential iPhone market of 28 million users.
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