The global rollout of Apple Inc’s revamped iPhone began yesterday in Asia with countdown celebrations and quick sellouts as crowds of gadget fans streamed into stores after long waits.
The target of desire was Apple’s much-hyped 3G, or third-generation, wireless-connecting cellphone — an upgrade of the model that went on sale last year in the US and several other nations.
Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan were the Asia-Pacific locations getting the new phone, with festivities shifting to Europe as the global day and 22-nation launch progressed. In the US, phones were to be made available at 8am in each time zone.
“Just look at this obviously innovative design,” said Yuki Kurita, emerging from a Tokyo store with the brand new 3G iPhone he barely knew how to use.
The 23-year-old system engineer, among about 1,500 people who had camped out on the street by one downtown store, said he was too excited to feel tired and called his mother to boast about his new buy.
“I am so thrilled just thinking about how I get to touch this,” he said, carrying bags of clothing and a skateboard he had used as a chair during his wait.
Kurita acknowledged, though, that the iPhone would replace only one of his two phones. He and other Japanese buyers said they wanted to check out how services such as e-mail worked before they decide to forsake their old phones.
The iPhone’s capabilities are less revolutionary in Japan, where people have for years used tech-heavy phones from domestic makers such as Sharp Corp and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co to exchange e-mail, search for restaurants, download video and play games.
But networks prevalent up to now offer only limited access to the Web, and the iPhone is designed to browse the Web in much the same way computers do. Its arrival marks a significant foreign entry in a market dominated by local brands.
The frenzy over the iPhone was visible elsewhere in Asia as well.
In Hong Kong, designer Ho Kak-yin, 31, wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jealous?” was the first in line in a queue of about 100 inside a Hong Kong shopping mall.
“I’m very excited. It’s very amazing,” Ho said, after lining up two hours ahead of the kickoff.
Hundreds lined up outside stores in New Zealand’s main cities got their iPhones earlier at midnight on Thursday.
“Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s head. “And I need a new phone.”
Exactly how many iPhones will be available has been uncertain, fueling the hype about the Apple gadget with a cool-factor reputation.
“This is the year that the cellphone becomes an Internet-connecting machine,” Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank Corp, the only carrier selling the iPhone in Japan, said at the countdown ceremony. “Today is that day that will make it real, and it’s a historic day.”
Softbank said it sold out of iPhones at three major Tokyo stores before they opened. It has refused to say how many iPhones are being sold and said it didn’t have a nationwide store tally.
Tomohiko Katsu, a 38-year-old Japanese banker, said he has rarely lined up for any product in his life but wanted to make sure he got the iPhone and got in line on Thursday afternoon.
“All the features come packed in a compact machine,” he said. “It’s really small for a mobile PC device.”
A report this week by Mizuho Securities Co said the iPhone had potential to change lifestyles and bring new business opportunities.
Japanese tend to spend an hour or more on daily train commutes, and the iPhone could get them surfing the Web more than reading or listening to music, it said.
The iPhone’s arrival could also change the relationship between manufacturers and carriers because of Apple’s clout. Up to now, carriers have had considerable leverage over manufacturers, the report said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has