iPhone 6年底前入华希望不大

    中国的“果粉”这次可能不会像上次那样走运了。

    去年9月，上一款iPhone发布的时候，在苹果公司的协调下，北京的消费者得以与纽约的消费者同时在第一时间购买到iPhone 5S。在那之前，往往是iPhone已经在美国和欧洲发布了几个月了，中国大陆的果粉才能盼到属于他们自己的iPhone。

    这次iPhone 6的首发地也没有中国大陆，具体原因尚不清楚。苹果只是表示，新一代iPhone将于9月19日在美国和其他9个地区同步首发，中国大陆未在此列。

    中国的三大运营商并没有公开说得太多，不过最近通过电话访问三大运营商的门店和服务代表得知，他们恐怕到年底前都无法获得iPhone 6。中国移动（China Mobile）的一名员工表示，她没法对iPhone 6的上市时间做任何表态，因为苹果还没有决定什么时候在中国发布iPhone 6。（在本周的中国媒体上，“苹果未做出决定”是一句非常普遍的理由。）同时中国第二大运营商中国联通（China Unicom）的一名代表也表示，iPhone 6可能要到将近年底才能上市。

    尽管苹果尚未就iPhone 6何时才能正式登陆中国表态，不过中国作为苹果的全球第三大市场和增长最快的市场，iPhone 6迟迟不能在华上市似乎也不是苹果愿意看到的结果。上海的一份商务报纸引述消息人士的话称，苹果至今尚未获得中国工信部的入网许可证。据长江商学院（Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business）指出，去年iPhone 5S和iPhone 5C早在正式发布之前，就获得了工信部的入网许可证。

    iPhone在中国迟迟不上市也是有先例的。比如iPhone 4就是在美国上市了三个月后，才在中国发布的。iPhone 5也是晚于美国上市三个月。这些机型推迟发布的理由我们并不清楚。对于iPhone 5来说，2012年它通过中国监管机构的批准之后，苹果就立即启动了上市销售。看来这次又是监管机构拖了上市的后腿。

    中国几千万社交媒体用户迅速进入吐槽状态：有网友表示，iPhone虽然可能是在中国组装的，但是它们很少在这儿先开卖。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    China’s Apple fans aren’t feeling lucky anymore.

    The last time a new iPhone was released, last September with the iPhone 5S, Apple coordinated its release so that Beijing customers and New York customers could buy their gadgets at the same time. Before then, Mainland China fans had to wait months to get their hands on iPhones already available in the U.S. and Europe.

    For reasons that aren’t clear just yet, that’s not the case with the iPhone 6. Apple said the new generation iPhone wouldn’t go on sale in China on the same date —this Friday, Sept. 19— as the U.S. and nine other regions.

    China’s big carriers aren’t saying much publicly, but recent calls to their stores and service reps indicate they won’t be getting the iPhone 6 until the end of the year. A China Mobile employee said she couldn’t say anything on the timing because Apple hadn’t yet decided when it would release the iPhone in China. (Apple not making a decision was a common refrain in the Chinese press this week.) Meanwhile, a rep at China Unicom, the country’s second largest carrier, said the iPhone 6 would likely be available near the end of this year.

    While Apple hasn’t released a date when the iPhone 6 will finally be available in China, its biggest growth market and third largest market total, that’s likely not by choice. A Shanghai business paper quoting a source saying Apple hasn’t received a network license for the new iPhone from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, as noted by Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, the iPhone 5S and 5C were granted network access even before Apple formally launched the products.

    There is precedent. The iPhone 4 was released in China three months after it became available in the U.S. The iPhone 5 was also released three months later in Mainland China. The reasons behind those delays are less clear. For the iPhone 5, Apple sold it as soon as it received approval from China’s regulators in 2012. It looks like regulators are again slowing the process.

    China’s tens of millions of social media users are quick to mock: iPhones may be built in China, but rarely are they sold here first.