iPhone's internationalization as well as the localization in China and the World

It has been rumored that the largest mobile operator in China, China Mobile is talking with Apple to bring iPhone to Chinese market . At the first glance, the news seems exciting. Chinese market has been expecting this stylish device for too long, especially among large group of fashion-chasing young people, most of them are college students, middle and high-income graduates. They have been growing together with the Chinese information and telecom market in the past decade, and spend surprising much more money on mobile phones and iPods. It's hardly imaginable a student who do not earn a penny at all, will spend over 4000RMB(roughly 500USD) for a mobile phone just for one or two years of use. Even for college graduates, who are paid more than the average(I'm pretty sure, the average couldn't exceed 2000RMB(250USD) for a first-year graduate) are willing to spend that amount of money on their mobile phones. Most of them are gathered in several major cities, like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which might make the thing even less understandable for westerners, most of them have to pay for apartment rents and daily foods - that is really a heavy burden for them. Not to mention their night life in pubs and money smashed on girls.

Let's get back to iPhone. I'm kind of skeptic about its success in China, at least before the localized strategies come out. First of all, the monthly fee for iPhone, which is 59.99USD the lowest in the States could be a potential unease for them to sweep their cards. It won't be a problem at all for riches anyway, but for the group of people mentioned above, they might not want to pay such kind of expensive bills. Mobile Internet surfing is far less popular in China compared to Japan, Korea or even the States. Most people use QQ(a dominant instant messenger software in China), but tiny part of them actually use it to chat with friends on their phones, and ever fewer people use email as daily communication means, at least among the people mentioned in the first paragraph. Most of them are just curious about iPhone and to satisfy their peacockery. Will curiosity leads to acceptance? Or, to be less offensive, they just want to have a up-to-date iPod, a nice sounded mobile stereo, a 2 mega camera and a keyboard which allows them to flying type SMSs. As for the Internet, they don't need unlimited connection and a nicely designed email client. Moreover, iPhone's WiFi connectivity may have little use in most part of the country. City and campus wide wireless Internet connection infrastructure is still in its embryo. Without thus high-speed  wireless hotspots available, it's even less possible for them to use iPhone's Internet functionalities.

Well.. but I believe that's certainly possible that the fancy Internet surfing on revolutionary devices such as iPhone will greatly stimulate the growth of more versatile and experience-oriented mobile value added services. But capacity building especially on mobile content, in reverse, is one of the key bottleneck of iPhone's proliferation outside the States. For example, less Chinese use Youtube compared to native counterparts Tudou.com simply because tudou has more localized contents and also faster than Youtube most of the time. Would Apple replace the Youtube button by Tudou? I doubt it, cuz I doubt the two parties would be able to come up with a nice revenue sharing strategy. Same thing is about iTunes. No one in Chinese ever uses iTunes online store to buy music, TV shows or movies. The reason is two-fold basically. First, iTunes online store has not available for Chinese market yet, and second the IPR protection awareness among users are far more weaker than American users. Most of the music, movies and shows are just exchanges among computers illegally, without any authorization(actually this is a rising global issue). Although the situation is getting better, but I don't think it makes any sense for Apple to have the iTunes online store button on "Chinese version iPhones". Another issue could be the fighting between Google(GuGe) and Baidu. Would iPhone changes its default search engine? Well.. you answer that yourself.

So long story short, if the ambitious China Mobile is serious to bring iPhone to China, and so does Apple, there would be a long way to go before iPhone makes its debut in China. First, stakeholders including manufacturer(Apple), operator(China Mobile), content providers(Google, Baidu, Youtube, Facebook), must find agreement on the revenue sharing strategy, and the pricing policy that is suitable enough for different types of users. Cultural implications should also been taken care of, especially in countries like China. iPhone's internationalization is on the way. But it's quite clear, that the revolutionary iPhone's marketing in China, the world's largest telecom market, won't be the easiest one.