More Chinese Ancestors are Becoming Apple User in Heaven

Randy Cheung, Apr 8, 2013 12:43 PM, 482 views, Got something to say ?,

During China’s annual Qingming Festival, also known as “Tomb Sweeping Day,” Chinese people repair and clean the graves of dead relatives as part of an ancient custom to ensure a peaceful afterlife. They also leave offerings of food, fake money and liquor. Under Mao, the practice of leaving offerings to the dead was suppressed, but it was quickly reinstated once he was no longer in power. In 2008, the festival was made a national holiday, and last year 520 million Chinese visited cemeteries – almost all bearing some kind of gift. Traditional gifts include fake money and paper bags of clothing. But in recent years, people are now giving paper representations of TV sets, washing machines, houses and luxury cars. With the popularity of Apple products in China, cardboard representations of popular mock Apple products have gone to the top of the gift list …

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Apple CEO Grovels to Communist China

Star Chang, Apr 2, 2013 9:02 AM, 589 views, 5 Comments »,

[UPDATE] Bowing to pressure, Apple CEO Tim Cook apologised to Chinese consumers and altered iPhone warranty policies after more than two weeks of condemnation of its after-sales service in China. From China Central Television to the People’s Daily newspaper, government-controlled media outlets bashed the world’s largest tech giant for its “arrogance,” protesting among other things that its current one-year service warranty was far shorter than in other smaller markets. Apple, which initially dismissed those criticisms, promised to overhaul its consumer practices. Cook’s apology, unusual though not as rare as during his predecessor Steve Jobs’ tenure, highlights the importance of the market for Apple …

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Are Chinese Authorities Plan to Pull Down Apple’s Superior Standing in China ?

Star Chang, Apr 1, 2013 1:50 PM, 383 views, Got something to say ?,

Chinese media outlets have been heavily attacking Apple’s business practices in the country, following the previous report on Consumer Rights Day produced by state broadcaster China Central Television. The latest gripe has come from government’s mouthpiece the People’s Daily, which has been railing Apple for five consecutive days since March 25. The Chinese news agency went on attacking Apple’s tax avoidance, citing a New York Times report (Chinese netizen unable to surf the NYT website …) published last year about the company saving billions of dollars in taxes in several US states. In its most recent report, it even called the US company “arrogant.” Over 3.8 million users have forwarded or commented on the issue through Chinese social media, some shared their negative experiences concerning purchases of Apple’s products, while many others questioned the motive behind the smear campaign against Apple …

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Chinese Animation Studio Sues Apple For App Store’s Copyright Violations

Herman Lai, Mar 28, 2013 11:05 PM, 842 views, Got something to say ?,

Shanghai Animation Film Studio, China’s first and official animation factory, sued Apple for hosting applications containing unlicensed versions of their works on its App Store that were available for download, demanding a total compensation of 3.3 million yuan (around $530,000 USD) from Apple for violating the copyrights of their 110 works.

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Foxconn Ready to Produce Apple’s iTV with Sharp’s Technologies at Low Manufacturing Cost

Star Chang, Mar 28, 2013 9:11 AM, 1,415 views, 1 Comment »,

Market insiders speculate that Taiwan’s Hon Hai, better known internationally by its trading name Foxconn, may secure orders from Apple to produce its iTVs. Japan TV maker Sharp, which is so-called partially owned by Hon Hai, has just sold a portion of its shares to Samsung, leading to speculation that it may lose its iTV orders because of the much-publicized competition between the two tech giants. Foxconn is already Apple’s main manufacturing partner for its iPhone and iPad, but Apple is likely to diversify manufacturers for its up coming new products, Foxconn will properly be losing iPhone’s orders from Apple. While the news on iTV comes on the tails of Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou visited Japan early this month, where he reportedly met Apple’s senior executives in Osaka. Gou has personal investments in an LCD TV plant, which he used to show Apple executives that Hon Hai has the ability to produce iTVs …

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Chinese Students Get Into Debt For Buying Apple Gadgets

Star Chang, Mar 24, 2013 9:55 AM, 519 views, Got something to say ?,

Over 20,000 college students in Wuhan city have taken out high-interest loans to buy high-end electronic products, mostly Apple devices. From January 2012 to the end of February this year, these young adults have applied for loans worth a total of 160 million yuan (US$26 million) from private finance and investment companies. They have taken loans with heavy annual interest rates of up to 47 percent on 12-month terms. The agency approves loans quite differently from a normal Chinese bank, with the firm processing the application takes only half an hour time. About 90 percent of the credit was used to buy Apple products such as iPhones and iPads, and other high-end electronic gadgets …

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Chinese Shopping Website to Compensate Over US$70,000 for Selling Returned iPhones

Star Chang, Mar 24, 2013 12:50 AM, 427 views, Got something to say ?,

A Chinese shopping website has to compensate two customer US$76,950 for reselling iPhones that were returned for defects. The website, Dangdang.com, had sold twenty iPhone 4 to two Beijing man surnamed Chen and Song last August at 4,850 yuan (US$780) per phone. The two man suspected the iPhones were not genuine because of the color of the packaging, so they sent all their goods to Apple for verification. After checking, nineteen of the phones were verified as returned defective unit, while the serial number of another could not be located in Apple’s database, suggesting a fake. Chen and Song initially contacted Dangdang for compensation but their request was denied, though the company agreed to refund them if they could provide Apple’s test reports as proof …

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Apple Upgrades China App Store for Faster Downloading

Randy Cheung, Mar 19, 2013 1:36 PM, 801 views, 1 Comment »,

China is Apple’s second biggest regional market by revenue behind the US. But Chinese Apple user always has a painful experience on downloading apps from Apple’s App Store. The connection in China is slow, it could take more than 10 minutes to get a simple app like FlipBoard to be downloaded. And it is one of the main reasons for Chinese people desperately need jailbreaking for their iPhone and iPad to go for local third-party App Store. Now the download speed in Apple’s online store in China has jumped 10 times through a recent network infrastructure upgrade. Apple used CDN (Content Delivery Network) to upgrade their network, which allowed Chinese users have a much higher download speed. CDN is usually deployed in multiple locations, often over multiple backbones. Benefits include reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, or increasing global availability of content. The latest upgrade helped Apple to improve the services of the iOS system in China in order to compete with the Android. The enhance of Chinese input method in iOS should be the next upgrade.

The Inside Story of China’s State Broadcaster in Smear Campaign Against Apple (Video)

Star Chang, Mar 19, 2013 4:56 AM, 2,584 views, 2 Comments »,

[UPDATE] Apple was accused of jerking Chinese consumers around in a 3-hour expose aired by China Central Television last week, but a celebrity’s foolish mistake on Chinese social media revealed that the so-called investigative journalism from the broadcaster was nothing but a PR offensive against the wrong targets. Each year on March 15, the Consumers’ Rights Protection Day in China, the state broadcaster runs a special TV show that takes to task shoddy products or substandard services in the name of alerting the nation and laying bare corporate evils. In this year, the show said that Chinese customers are not provided with the same customer service from Apple as it does to users in other countries. China Central Television had even gathered a number of journalist, they were wearing red color vest that look like Red Guards from the Cultural Revolution, ‘attacking’ the Apple store in Beijing to question the employees for the unfair warranty policy …

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Foxconn is Losing Orders for Apple’s Low-cost iPhone

Star Chang, Mar 17, 2013 10:29 PM, 916 views, 1 Comment »,

Apple was likely to diversify manufacturers for both its low-cost and legacy iPhones. Apple biggest contractor Foxconn would be losing orders for the upcoming low-cost iPhone. According to the analysta from KGI Research, who has a reliable track record in predicting Apple’s future product plans, said that the less expensive iPhone model will be offered in a range of colors and have a “super-thin plastic casing mixed with glass fiber.” The new material will make it stronger, thinner and lighter than typical smartphone plastic casings. Green Point of the Jabil group and Hi-P from Singapore are being tapped for producing the case, Foxconn will assemble the majority of the units, with Pegatron taking care of the rest …

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