January 13: the start of an iPhone 4S feeding frenzy in China

Chinese customers will soon be able to buy the iPhone 4S without having to import the device from elsewhere, as Apple announced on Wednesday that it would launch the iPhone 4S there and 21 other countries on January 13. But unlike your other run-of-the-mill international launches, the Chinese launch of the iPhone 4S will play a significant role in the device's?and Apple's?success in the coming quarters, largely thanks to the country's rapid rate of economic growth and increasing demand for Apple products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in October during the company's Q4 conference call that the company's revenues from China were up 270 percent year-over-year, with China accounting for 12 percent of all revenues during all of fiscal 2011 (up from just 2 percent in fiscal 2009). According to Cook, Apple's growth in China is "growing at a feverish pace," adding that China is an "area of enormous opportunity" and that the country has now claimed Apple's number two spot in the list of top revenue countries.

"How far can it go? Certainly in my lifetime I've never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class who aspire to buy products that Apple makes," Cook said on the call. "In China, the sky is the limit there."

That's why the official launch of the iPhone 4S in China will be a feeding frenzy. There are already plenty of iPhones of all generations in China because of the massive import market, but customers will undoubtedly prefer to buy their new iPhones directly from Apple (and especially in those new, fancy Chinese Apple Stores). The other countries that will see the iPhone 4S launch this Friday are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and Uganda.

Source: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/everything/~3/uv41Fv2NyOc/january-13-the-start-of-an-iphone-4s-feeding-frenzy-in-china.ars

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