CibbuanoChinese Black Market iPhones
November 28th 2007 18:04
Whether or not Apple released the iPhone in China is almost irrelevant; smugglers bring in desirable goods for the enormous population to devour. Though the interface is in Chinese, that doesn't stop crafty hackers, who have figured out how to unlock the phone and install Chinese software on it.
Wired's post on the iPhone craze in China shows how far they'll go to use one...
"Stripped of communications capabilities and lacking support for Chinese characters, these devices were glorified, nearly useless PDAs. They sold for $1,200 to $2,400 apiece and weren't much of a hit with Chinese consumers.
New Jersey student George Hotz's highly publicized unlocking feat of Aug. 21 injected some supply into the Chinese iPhone market, and the prices quickly dropped to $700. But by the end of the month, local iPhones still couldn't send text messages in Chinese. And most available iPhones were still not completely unlocked. They could only make calls, not receive any."
China is like the Wild Wild West, with less Will Smith and more hissing rattlesnakes... almost anything can happen there, with the nebulous laws, the hard-to-learn language and the massive population that contains an extremely intelligent population.
When word came out about the iPhone, Chinese reverse engineers knocked one out of the park:
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