Chinese iPhone has grey market to contend with

By most accounts, the iPhone's debut in China has been lackluster. Figures at China's only Apple Store in Mainland China are incredibly bad. They sold 10 on Saturday and only one on Sunday. The Apple Store Manager hopes that sales pick up during the week.

This, to a nation of 1.3 billion people and almost 800 million mobile users. In fact, China's leading mobile carrier has more subscribers than the US has citizens.

What's the problem?

Apple has been selling Gray Market iPhones to the Chinese through the open iPhone sales in HongKong.

What's more, these Gray iPhones are better equipped than the official Apple ones. The official iPhones aren't allowed to have Wifi in China so that's been stripped (ironically the ability to have Wifi was reinstated, it will just take Apple a long time to start building these again).

The gray market iPhones are also cheaper and available in most neighboring countries as well. Finally, once they buy one, users can switch networks at their leisure, the unlocked iPhones can switch networks based on the Simcard installed

So Apple might already have finally met its match in when it comes to Chinese competition...from other iPhones.