Apple has resumed selling iPhone 4S smartphones in China online, about a month after sales were halted in that country in part because of scalpers that rioted in one city. Read more…

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China Telecom is getting very near to launching Apple’s iPhone 4S on its network, the carrier said in a press release Tuesday obtained by China Daily. China Telecom subsidiary Beijing Telecom said a CDMA version of the iPhone 4S will likely be available to its customers by the end of February or the beginning of March.

Apple has been taking preparatory steps in advance of a launch with China Telecom, China’s third largest mobile network operator. Earlier in January, Apple secured regulatory approval to sell a device in China that operates using the CDMA2000 network standard, which is the technology China Telecom uses for its 3G network. At the time, the only step remaining for Apple was to get a license from China’s Telecommunications Equipment and Certification Center to begin selling the device, which it gained on Monday this week.

Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty predicted that Apple could grow its iPhone sales by as many as 57 million units in China over the next two years if it succeeds in securing partnerships with China Telecom and China Mobile. China Telecom will offer Apple a potential subscriber pool of roughly 15 million high-end subscribers according to Morgan Stanley’s numbers, approximately doubling its current reach through official partner China Unicom.

The deal hasn’t yet been confirmed by Beijing Telecom’s parent company beyond the report from China Daily, and no pricing details have been released, but the pieces are in place, and there’s little reason to suspect Apple wouldn’t want to expand its presence in China as quickly as possible. No doubt a partnership with China Mobile, which reaches 650 million subscribers and has around a 70 percent share of the Chinese mobile market, is also a priority, but technological factors likely precludes official iPhone support until Apple creates a version specifically for China Mobile’s network.

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We know how important the greater China region is to Apple: the country is Apple’s second-most lucrative market for selling its wares, and riots start when its lavish, heavily trafficked new stores in the country selling the iPhone 4S fail to open on time. But where will Apple look next when it comes time to focus on expanding to new rapidly emerging markets? Brazil.

On the company’s fiscal first quarter of 2012 earnings call on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company definitely has its eye on Brazil as a possible place to one day open Apple stores:

On the second country on the list of those four [China, Brazil, Russia, India], for us, would be Brazil. I think there’s a huge opportunity for us there, and we’ve more than begun to go deeper into Brazil. But I don’t want to signal that, that means that Apple retail will be there, because I don’t envision that occurring in the near term.

So it may not be thinking of building stores in the “near term,” but it’s clear Apple has plans for the country and its growing population of urban consumers with increasing buying power. Brazil is an easy choice for Apple to make its grand entrance in South America: the country of well over 200 million people has one of the best economies in South America right now, and it’s seen as a prime place for foreign investment.

Apple does already have a presence in Brazil — through online sales and devices sold through carrier resellers and retail partners. And just this past quarter it finally opened up the iTunes Store to customers in the country. Also, it just so happens that Apple this month hired a new general manager for its Latin America business, Anderson Teixeira, who’s from — you guessed it — Brazil.

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China is closing in on the 1 billion mobile connections mark, which it will likely surpass before the end of March, according to a new Wireless Intelligence report. China has always been a world power in wireless, but its importance is poised to grow further as its huge population is now embracing mobile data services.

China has long been the largest single market for subscriber growth, but that growth was mainly driven by low-end devices and voice services. Now that all threes of China’s major operators — China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom – have launched 3G networks, smartphones and other mobile data devices are proliferating. 3G connections surpassed 200 million at the end of 2011, which is still only a fifth of China’s total subscribers, but 3G devices account for 80 percent of all new sales, according to the report.

Demand for smartphones is huge as evidenced by the unruly crowds that formed at Apple’s stores last week for the launch of the iPhone 4S with China Unicom. In October, Apple said China had become its most important market outside of the U.S. for all of its products. China Unicom is also diversifying into Android using Google’s platform to feed the growing demand for cheap smartphones. Wireless Intelligence said that Unicom estimates it will sell 90 million low-cost smartphones this year in addition to 60 million high-end device like the iPhone.

To put those number in perspective, wireless trade organization CTIA reported that in June the U.S. had 322.9 million connections, which already exceeds the U.S. population. According to China’s last census, its population numbered 1.3 billion, which means it still has plenty of room to grow. If China’s huge rate of smartphone adoption continues, the U.S. will could wind up playing second fiddle to China on the wireless global stage

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Apple has now stopped selling the iPhone 4S in its retail stores in China, at least for now, following the reports of huge crowds outside Apple’s Beijing store Friday that started to throw eggs. Read more…

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The launch of the iPhone 4S in China today included massive crowds at Apple’s official Beijing store. Some members of the crowd threw eggs when the store didn’t open to the public as planned. Read more…

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Microsoft is reportedly investigating a threat of mass suicide of some of the workers at a Foxconn plant in China which makes its Xbox 360 game console as part of a pay dispute. Read more…

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Apple is one step closer to nearly doubling its potential iPhone subscriber base in China, thanks to a new regulatory approval it secured in that country this week, according to Bloomberg. Apple now has official permission from the China Radio Management Office to offer a handset that operates on the CDMA2000 network standard, which is used by the third-largest Chinese carrier China Telecom.

China Telecom would be the second iPhone carrier in China, joining the country’s second-largest network provider China Unicom. China Telecom would add a potential buying audience of 33.4 million mobile subscribers to China Unicom’s network of 36.5 million users. All that remains is that Apple secure a license from China’s Telecommunications Equipment and Certification Center prior to offering the device for sale.

Apple wouldn’t need to do much to offer the right hardware for the network: China Telecom uses a 3G CDMA2000 network, based on the same standard as Verizon’s mobile 3G network in the U.S. Adding the carrier officially would not only expand Apple’s reach, but also help it win back more legit channel sales from the gray market: Gartner analyst Sandy Shen told Bloomberg that as authorized sales outlets become more widely available, gray market sales dwindle.

Apple may soon face entirely different challenges in China, however, especially if it rapidly scales its potential iOS user base in the country. Recent reports indicate that Apple is currently being sued by a group of Chinese writers over allegations that pirated books are being offered for sale on the App Store. The group has asked Apple to remove the books, but so far, the iPhone-maker has refused. The group plans to file another lawsuit on behalf of more authors soon, and says that the problem has become rampant. The group is only seeking around $ 1.2 million U.S. in damages for this first suit, but in the long term Apple could alienate content providers and invite continued legal trouble by ignoring the problem.

As China becomes more central to the future of Apple’s mobile market, the company will likely have to come up with new ways to address these and other unique challenges. We’ve seen that localization is key when it comes to making apps successful in Asian App Stores, so it would make sense that Apple may eventually want to set up more localized operations for dealing with Chinese App Store content as well. Especially given the recent move to make the Chinese App Store open to payments using local currency.

It looks like we’ll soon see China’s iPhone use explode, above and beyond the impressive growth it’s already posting in that country. Don’t be surprised if Apple pumps up its local operations as well.

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Apple has announced that its iPhone 4S smartphone will finally go on sale in China, the world’s second largest mobile phone market, on January 31, along with 21 other countries. Read more…

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Apple will begin selling the iPhone 4S in China on Friday, Jan. 13 according to a press release from the company issued Wednesday morning. In addition to finally arriving in Apple’s “fastest-growing region by far,” the iPhone 4S will also hit 21 other new countries.

The iPhone 4S will then be available in 90 countries in total, making it Apple’s “fastest iPhone rollout ever,” according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The new countries getting the iPhone on Jan. 13 include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

The iPhone 4S has already performed very well in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where it debuted in December and November respectively. Apple’s exclusive carrier partner in China is China Unicom, which boasts 196 million mobile subscribers according to a recent count from November.

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