Apple today announced that it would be bringing three of its entertainment services -- Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks -- to customers in China today. This marks the first time customers in China will have access to Apple's entertainment ecosystem.
“Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “One of the top requests has been more great content and we’re thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts.”
Customers in China will be able to sign up for the three-month free trial of Apple Music starting on September 30. The service will include music from Chinese artists like Eason Chan and JJ Lin in addition to international artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. Likewise, iTunes Movies will include movies from Chinese film studios in addition to Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic World and Avengers: Age of Ultron. iBooks will include free and paid Chinese language books.
Apple says that as a token of appreciation, the recent Chinese hit film The Taking of Tiger Mountain will be available for free to all customers in China for a limited time.
China has become increasingly important to Apple in recent years. Recently, the Cupertino company included China in the first wave of countries to be able to purchase the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
Top Rated Comments
2134: Apple sells 100M iPhones on opening week.
"Yeah, well that's cause they included Mars for the first time. No way they could sell that much if it was only Earth!"
I wonder how the censorship system works, and if Apple has to be the enforcer.
If so, that would be a Bad Thing.
Chinese population is diverse, as diverse of any other population in the world. Except the 'one percent' in China is about 15 million people. So there is a large amount of Chinese that do have money to burn.
But here comes the culture in again. This above class of Chinese has the habit to prefer long term business investments rather than making a quick buck. They'd buy land or buildings, in the first place not to get direct turnover through rental or commercializing them. They buy them for the children of their grandchildren. While building they will choose for over engineered structure, and skim big time on the finishing.
What has this to do with iTunes? I have quite some Chinese acquaintances and most of them got their iPhones as 'presents' from some family member. Of course their new gadget is not quite the long term investment their parents had in mind. Culture and customs do change but it'll need a 180 degrees turn before these new owners would swipe the plastic to buy content for it.
The iPhone is a status symbol and nobody sees whether you have a large portfolio of paid content on it. There's a lot of free apps and the pirate appstores will thrive as never seen before.
I do admit above point of view is just how I see it. By no means I pretend that I know better than any other person on this forum or beyond.
One thing is for sure though. The more Chinese iPhone users, the quicker we'll see new jailbreaks. Much quicker than before.
The pirated movie industry is deeply cultured here. Shops selling pirated DVD's are easiliy found. And I'm not talking about small shags in the corner of a dark allay. I'm talking big, clean, well lit shops on commercial locations, often in the mall, positioned right next to an international brand boutique fashion outlet.
Prices vary on the amount of DVD's you buy. Starts from $0.7 if you buy just one, $0.4 if you take 100 pieces. Not all copies perform the same and there's dvd players available to test before you buy.
Movie distributors (the licensed, official ones) are retailing blockbusters on DVD's for about $2.5 in a simple case until $6 in full retail carton/plastic box. Available in the big branded supermarkets like Carrefour.
People over here do understand that buying pirated movies is outlawed. But law enforcement in this field is practically non-existent. More and more people are willing to buy the official stuff, and $2.5 is the price they want to pay. However the biggest drive for them to buy these is not because its legallity, it's because they're probably better quality and have less potential to freeze up in the middle of the movie.
iTunes in China with US pricing is suicide.