Slot has been in charge of Dutch club Feyenoord since 2021, and won the Eredivisie league title in 2022-23 along with the KNVB Cup this season
football9 hours ago
Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai as well as authorised retailers around the country began offering the Wi-Fi model of the touchscreen device, millions of which have already been sold in the United States and a dozen other nations.
Analysts predicted strong demand for the iPad despite a paucity of Chinese content and the country’s huge unofficial market for Apple products, which are slipped in from Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States and resold.
At the US tech giant’s Beijing store, Han Ziwen, 35, said he had camped out for 60 hours to ensure he was first in line when the flagship outlet’s doors opened at 8:00 am.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “I buy iPad No. 1”, the bookstore owner held two of the sleek computers above his head in a victory sign as hundreds of people standing in the driving rain cheered.
Han bought a 16-gigabyte and 32-gigabyte version of the iPad costing a total of 8,776 yuan (1,305 dollars) — more than the vast majority of Chinese earn in a month. But he said: “For me, they are not expensive.”
In Shanghai, up to 200 people queued outside the underground Apple store which opened in July.
The first buyer, Ma Ya, a 46-year-old art dealer, said he had been waiting since 1:00 pm on Thursday for his chance to snare a new iPad — his second.
“I already had a 32GB iPad bought from Japan. I may give the old one to an employee,” Ma told AFP.
The 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi version of the iPad costs 3,988 yuan, the 32GB model sells for 4,788 yuan and the 64GB version is priced at 5,588 yuan.
California-based Apple has not said when the 3G-equipped version will go on sale in China, which is home to at least 420 million Internet users.
China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile operator which already offers the iPhone, says it is interested in joining forces for the iPad.
“There’s a growing number of Apple fans in China who have proven their interest in the iPod and the iPhone and based on that demand, the iPad will do well here,” said Ted Dean, managing director of technology consultancy BDA China.
However, observers say one hurdle to the iPad is that access to content is difficult for many Chinese users. Apple’s App Store is not available in Chinese and users must have dual-currency credit cards to make purchases.
China’s grey market for Apple products has developed for years, primarily to satisfy demand for the iPhone, which only officially went on sale in China last October — more than two years after its US launch.
Apple released the iPad in the United States on April 3 and sold more than three million units in the first 80 days.
After the China launch, Apple said it plans to roll out the iPad to “many more countries later this year”.
Wait times for the device have stretched into weeks in the United States, but Apple last week promised that orders would ship within 24 hours, in a sign that supply of the devices was catching up with demand.
The iPad allows users to watch video, listen to music, play games, surf the Web or read electronic books. In the United States, the cheapest model costs 499 dollars while the top version is priced at 829 dollars.
Charles Zhou, 30, an online transaction operator for a fund management company in Shanghai, said he got up early Friday to buy the device.
“I saw my boss using one and it looks pretty good,” he said.
Slot has been in charge of Dutch club Feyenoord since 2021, and won the Eredivisie league title in 2022-23 along with the KNVB Cup this season
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