Apple Manufacturing iPhone Without Wi-Fi for China?
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Posted July 15, 2009 at 10:54am by iClarified
Apple may be manufacturing a Wi-Fi less iPhone designed for Chinese consumers, according to a TradingMarkets report.
Sources tell TradingMarkets that two production lines in the Foxconn Shenzhen plant are producing 90-coded mobile phones which look to be iPhones.
The mysterious products might be the very model designed for Chinese users, according to another source, noting that the massively-produced device has no Wi-Fi functions, just like the A1324 model, the Chinese version of 3G iPhone being sent to the China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL) for a test.
The article puts the estimate of iPhones smuggled into the China Mainland at about 1,000,000.
The iPhone has been available in the Apple Store in China since last year. They're European iPhones and unlocked. There are lots of clones, poor ones, using the Apple casing. The cases even say 16GB on the back but are actually 2GB and don't have Apple's trademark features. For a single buyer, it's easy to bring a phone in. No need to smuggle. For resellers, that's where the smuggling comes in.