Last August, China Unicom Ltd (CHU) announced a 3-year partnership to officially bring the iPhone to China. As predicted in July, the CHU’s iPhone is sold with Wi-Fi disabled, in accordance with the Golden Shield Project. Additionally, 3GS hardware is still unavailable in China.

Despite these hindrances, handset and App Store sales have been doing well, AppleInsider reports. It’s estimated that $1 million in legitimate app sales have been made this year, with a little over a month-and-a-half left in the quarter.

Black market phones are a huge problem in China, and it’s been estimated nearly 2 million are in circulation, most of them jailbroken and running pirated apps. Apple hopes to sell 500,000 iPhones in China by the year’s end.

Next year looks brighter: Wi-Fi regulations were relaxed back in May, and CHU hopes to have a Wi-Fi enabled model available soon.

App Store performing well in China despite hindrances originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

App Store performing well in China despite hindrances originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

via | The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)