Chinese iPhone
Posted by pcoletti on March 13, 2009 · 2 Comments
As with so many things in Africa the people here often simply make do.
When it comes to Africa, Apple’s website lists a a number of countries where the iPhone is officially available from South Africa to Egypt, Kenya to Senegal. One country which is not on the list is Tanzania, which is surprising since they love their phones here. Even the poorest Tanzanian I’ve met has one and vendors on the streets of Kariokoo market in Dar es Salaam sell credit for as little as 500 Tsh (0.20 cents) for all the networks.
I’m pretty sure it’s legal to clone an iPhone — many other vendors now have ‘touch’ interfaces — but I’m not too sure Apple would be pleased about seeing their logo on the back of this gadget. Still, I don’t think Steve Jobs should worry too much, at 200,000 Tsh ($110) it’s way out of the reach of most people here.
You will note also in the above video that the Chinese iPhone has a SIM card. A distinct advantage over the device from which it was cloned. No lock-ins here in Africa and no need to jailbreak your device. Hear hear!
I would love to get the iphone, but getting the an original iphone here its a mess, may be apple should think about this, if you get the original it will be 4 times the price of the internet, which is unreasonable, thats why most of the people decided to go to the chinese one, but if apple will have a proper way of selling the iphone here at reasonable price, am pretty sure they will sell a lot of them, take an example of nokia and motorolla, they have discovered that tanzania are one of the big mobile phones consumers and they are tapping that market by advertising and selling, this makes people to buy original nokia and motorola rather than chinese ones.
Apple should seriously think about this issue, i completely agree with Sebastian.