China

Video: Apple's event marketing meets its match in China

The iPhone 5 faces fierce competition in the world's largest smartphone market

FORTUNE -- When Apple (AAPL) releases the iPhone 5 in China next week, it will be competing with local manufacturers who have studied Steve Jobs' every move, down to the cut of his black mock turtleneck.

M.I.C. Gadget produced this video of the elaborate launch in Beijing of the latest offering from Guangdong-based Meizu. You wouldn't know it from the event's MORE

A busy Thursday for Apple

Events are coming to a head for Apple on the eve of Pearl Harbor Day

FORTUNE -- There's going to be a lot Apple (AAPL) news to digest this Thursday, Dec. 6.

In fact, it could be an Apple three-ring circus staged in three cities on two continents:

San Jose, Calif. -- Attorneys for Apple and Samsung will clash once again in Judge Lucy Koh's San Jose courthouse in a hearing that will MORE

Are Apple's new iMacs being assembled in the U.S.?

Probably not, although some come with labels that suggest they are

FORTUNE --  A reader -- let's call him Aaron Gong -- wrote Saturday to say that he bought a new 21-inch iMac at an Apple Store in San Jose, Calif., and was surprised when he opened the box to see it marked "Assembled in USA" rather than in China, as we've all come to expect.

I checked with a neighbor who MORE

The iPhone 5 & iPad mini going to China: The analysts weigh in

There's good news and bad in Apple's Friday press release

FORTUNE -- There was mixed reaction on Wall Street to Apple's (AAPL) announcement about which new products are headed to China and when they might get there.

The key paragraph (with irritating trademark symbols stripped out):

The Wi-Fi versions of iPad mini and fourth generation iPad with Retina display will be available in China on Friday, December 7, and iPhone 5 will be MORE

Apple's iPhone 5 may be coming early to China

Two of the three biggest carriers expect to have it in late November or early December

FORTUNE -- In remarks made Friday on the sidelines of the Chinese Communist Party's 18th Party Congress in Beijing the chairmen of two of the country's leading mobile carriers indicated that they may be selling Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5 even earlier than expected.

China Telecom's (CHA) Wang Xiaochu told the Wall Street Journal that the phone MORE

Video: Foxconn's factory workers get an Apple Store

The company's first retail outlet in Shenzhen, China, employs 250, draws huge crowds

FORTUNE -- Three things struck me about Paco Wong's 18-minute YouTube video (pasted below) from the opening Saturday of Apple's (AAPL) first store in Shenzhen, China:

The number (reportedly 250) of retail staffers the company has employed
The size and enthusiasm of the crowd that showed up for free opening-day T-shirts
The number of iPhones and iPads the people in line already own.

In MORE

Apple's iPad mini fetching $480 in Chinese gray market

Supplies are tight, say Shanghai scalpers, but should ease in a week or so

FORTUNE -- "iPad mini price fry the 3000 yuan cattle worried not sell."

That, according to Google Translate, is the headline in The Phoenix, a Chinese language website that covers the Asian tech market.

The thrust of the story is that although the Apple (AAPL) store in Hong Kong is selling 16GB iPad minis for HK$ 2588 ($334), the MORE

Video: Hoopla at the opening of Beijing's new Apple Store

Apple built a huge, three-story retail outlet -- the city's 3rd -- just in time for the iPhone 5

FORTUNE -- Remember what happened in January when the iPhone 4S arrived in Beijing? Would-be customers and rival gangs of scalpers massed by the thousands outside the company's two stores. Demand totally overwhelmed supply and SWAT teams had to be called in to control the rioting when Apple (AAPL) halted sales before MORE

Can Apple win over China?

If you're the world's largest company - with nearly $600 billion in market value - getting bigger is a tough challenge. But if Apple can learn how to charm the world's largest population, the possibilities are limitless.

By Bill Powell, editor-at-large

FORTUNE -- Tim Cook, Apple's reserved and soft-spoken CEO, has a tendency to wax euphoric about the China market and his company's place in it.

When asked last year by an MORE

How to think about Foxconn

The contract manufacturer has become a symbol for worker abuse, but the Apple partner isn't the only bad actor in China.

By Bill Powell, editor-at-large

FORTUNE -- Hon Hai Precision, a.k.a. Foxconn, has become synonymous with emblematic 21st-century workplace misery. In late September, worker brawls triggered riots at a Foxconn assembly plant in central China. From January to June in 2010, 14 workers at Foxconn's massive operation in Shenzhe -- a MORE