Apple Opens Online Store In China

Apple has launched an online store in China, giving customers there the chance to buy popular Apple devices on the internet.

Apple’s online store in China features free shipping, free personalised engraving on any iPod or iPad, and the ability to custom configure any Mac.

The company also noted the online Apple Store also offers a selection of third-party products and is the only place online to buy the iPod nano Project (Red) edition, from which a portion of the sales goes to raising awareness and funds to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.

Holiday Season

In an effort to garner sales momentum for the upcoming holiday shopping season, the online Apple store in China is also offering signature gift wrap, available with the purchase of most Apple products including the iPod, iPad and iPhone. The online Apple Store also lets eligible students and faculty members take advantage of special education pricing on Apple products.

Also starting this week, customers in China can access Apple’s App Store in Simplified Chinese, with localised featured apps and charts of the most popular paid and free apps in China. The App Store offers iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users access to the catalogue of apps with over 300,000 apps in 20 categories including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

“We are thrilled to open our newest online store in China,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. “With personalised engraving, configure-to-order options and free shipping on everything, the Apple Store is a great destination for our customers in China.”

The iPhone 4 became available to Chinese customers in September through the company’s retail outlets in China, including the new Apple Store Hong Kong Plaza in Shanghai and the new Apple Store in Beijing, which opened the day the iPhone 4 hit the market.

The device retails for a suggested price of CNY4,999 (approximately £474) for the 16GB model and CNY5,999 (approximately £569) for 32GB model without a contract. The iPad tablet also went on sale in China in September; Apple offers a 16GB, 32GB and 64GB model.

New Macbook

Earlier this month, the company introduced two new MacBook Air notebooks, thin, lightweight notebooks relying on SSD (solid-state disk) storage technology. Available in two sizes – an 11-inch model with an 11.6-inch high-resolution LED-backlit display and a weight of 2.3 pounds, or an 13-inch model with a 13.3-inch display and a weight of 2.9 pounds, the 11-incher starts at $999 (£633), while the 13-incher starts at $1,299 (£824).

At the thickest points, the notebooks are .68 inches; at the thinnest: .11 inches. They feature precision aluminium unibody enclosures for better durability, and include full-size keyboards and glass Multi-Touch trackpads, FaceTime cameras, Intel Core 2 Duo processors, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics and SD card slots. The 13-inch MacBook Air gets 7 hours of battery life and 30 days of standby time.

Apple also released its financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earlier in the month, posted record revenue of $20.34 billion (£12.9 billion) and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion (£2.7 billion). Apple sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter, and sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 91 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.