
Apart from the complicated sales process, chinese media and internet users also cited the comparatively high price and unconvincing improvements in design and function as reasons why enthusiasm is low. However, mobile operator china unicom reported that some 300,000 preorders had been placed.
In the difficult chinese smartphone market, apple slipped from fourth to sixth place in the third quarter and is looking to catch up again with the iphone 5. The official launch in china, apple’s second-largest market, came barely three months after the iphone 5’s U.S. Launch. In the rough apple store in the popular peking sanlitun village, however, only a few customers inspected the new iphone in the morning. After the chaos at the sales launch of the iphone 4S, grids had been set up. A dozen police officers, numerous security guards and store clerks were prepared for a stampede, but it didn’t happen.
In order to curb the black market, only two iphones could be ordered per person on the internet since the previous day. "We have no other choice," said one seller. "There was too much chaos at the launch of the iphone 4."Referring to the pushers who sell the iphone 5 with extra charge in front of the door, the apple employee said: "they are the reason. Otherwise we would just sell it over the counter."Another vendor explained the low number of visitors also by the snow cover that had covered peking during the night.