COMMENTARY

------By Daniel Inman

The Chinese love their mobile phones, which probably explains why there are more than 400 million of them being used here. Yet the world's largest population of mobile phone users was left out in the cold when the most hyped telecommunications device in history was launched in June.

The device in question, of course, is Apple's iPhone, that sleek, shiny glass-and-aluminium bar that promises to be everything the phone of the future should be, with an iPod built in to boot.

Amazingly, the device that gadget bloggers dubbed "the Jesus phone" wasn't crushed under the weight of its own publicity. The iPhone is, by most accounts since its June 29 release, as good as people thought it would be. So when will the good people of China get to take a spin on this magical machine?

Sadly for Chinese Apple fans, it may not be for a while. The Cupertino company hasn't said anything yet about a China release, though it has said iPhone will be available "in Asia" next year, with a Europe launch slated for later this year. When you take into account the Byzantine bureaucracy of China's state-owned telecom operators, an iPhone arrival here is likely to be later rather than sooner.

Tough gatekeepers

On the surface, China Mobile and the rest should be happy to bring in a device like the iPhone. The carriers would love its appetite for data - Steve Jobs has touted it as the first full-featured mobile web browser - which would mean revenue from data traffic. But a number of factors prevent that from being a reality.

Possibly the biggest problem is the pipes that would carry all that data to be displayed on the iPhone. China still has not firmed up its plans for its next-generation mobile phone networks - what's called 3G - despite industry pressure to do so. Industry watchers agree that a 3G network running the home-grown TD-SCMA standard should be operational by the time the Olympics begin next year, but that's cold comfort since it's not one of the two global standards, WCDMA and CDMA2000. Licences for those have not been issued to carriers yet. If Apple is required to retool the iPhone to run on China's standard only, it's likely to delay the device's introduction here.

Softer concerns may also vaporise dreams of making iPhone calls in China. Apple is notorious for its secretive, almost paranoid culture and its obsession with controlling every part of its products. But if it tries to introduce the iPhone to China, it may meet its match. It will be difficult to imagine Jobs dictating terms to telephony behemoths like China Telecom and China Mobile, who are so used to virtual monopolies in the industry. Apple may be able to drive a hard bargain in most other countries it operates in, but in China, where even the likes of Microsoft and Google are beholden to the government, it may have to give up some of its autonomy, which could be a deal-breaker for Jobs.

Cultural gap

Even if the iPhone does make it to the mainland, the question of whether anyone will care remains. One of its advertised features is "visual voicemail", which lets you see a list of people who've left voice messages for you instead of the infuriating audio-only way of checking messages. This is an excellent feature, except for the fact that hardly anyone in China uses voicemail (the bias towards text messaging may well favour phones with tactile buttons, which the iPhone lacks). Subtle cultural differences, plus the fact that Apple hasn't said how it will implement features like Chinese-language input, could turn a hot product cold.

There is also the issue of whether Chinese users will want to shell out for the expensive iPhone. It costs up to US$599 (€434) in the US, not including a mandatory two-year plan with Apple's exclusive carrier AT&T. According to estimates by some Apple fan sites, the minimum cost of owning an iPhone with a service contract is US$1,975, a princely sum even in the US. Those figures probably won't translate well in the price-sensitive Chinese retail market, though optimists will point out that premium phones still sell well here.

One advantage the iPhone would have in China is that it's very tough to counterfeit - at least faithfully. So-called iPhone clones, a few of which have been appearing in electronics malls here, may use similar touch screen technology, but their operating systems are still limited to Windows Mobile, Symbian or a handful of others, none of which approximate Apple's finely tuned interface.

In any case, the China market isn't on Apple's radar screen at the moment. It has no dedicated Apple store here, and resellers are few and far between. IPods are visible, but have nowhere near the market share they enjoy elsewhere. The iTunes store, which appears to be a platform that Apple is increasingly building on (the iPhone has to be activated through it), doesn't work here. That has to strike points off the likelihood of an imminent iPhone launch in China - despite the fact that it is assembled here. It looks like devoted Chinese fans will have to continue to make do carrying both a phone and an iPod in their pockets.