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» Want to pre-order the iPhone 4s in Hong Kong? Too late. You’re stuck waiting in line. The phone will be available in stores this Friday and analysts are expecting “long lines and serial stock outs.” It’s a good sign for when the phone hits mainland China — a date for which has not been announced. It’s led to a black-market Apple-smuggling industry between Hong Kong and China, which is likely to only continue with the iPhone 4S

Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Dec 2010 21:50

14 Chinese housewives were arrested for smuggling lots of tech devices into China
88 the number of iPads the fourteen women had, roughly enough to create an iPad fort
340 the number of phones they had; it was a total haul worth roughly $143,000 source

» Why the demand? Simple. The only version of the iPad sold in China is the wi-fi version. The 3G version (sold in Hong Kong) is in very high demand as a result. Plus, China has recently started taxing iPads brought in from Hong Kong, and on the other end, smugglers have been recruiting people without criminal records to make the runs from Hong Kong to China (for around $30 a run). We end this post with a visual image; imagine a woman with 65 smartphones wrapped around her chest and 20 more in her handbag. Yes, this actually happened.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Google did, but not too much. The search giant angered China by re-directing to its free-speech-allowing Hong Kong site, threatening to revoke its business license. So, to prevent that, Google will force Chinese users to click on an image before going to the Hong Kong site, which is annoying but likely gets around China’s problems. Will it work? Good question. China is finicky. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.
Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond • Regarding the company’s final decision on handling the China problem. There’s a very good chance that China will censor the search engine on the mainland after this, but you can at least say they tried very hard to have it both ways. This is a win for human rights. Unfortunately, it may not be a win that does Chinese citizens a whole lot of good. Is it better to be unable to give uncensored information, or willfully censor by the rules of a country that is willing to make people drive long distances just to check e-mail? source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink