Apple Surprise China with iPhone Air Deliveries — Just Days After Major eSIM Breakthrough

Upon confirmation, Apple also began sending pre-ordered iPhone Airs to its customers in China, with some of the largest telecom companies finally launching eSIM services in the preceding days. This makes the Air iPhone the world's foremost standalone handset with an eSIM, featuring no physical SIM slot. For such a phone to be in use in China, the official carriers had to approve it.

Functioning and Role-Appropriate Price of A Telecom Carrier

All three major carriers, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, have been busy implementing eSIM service for the Air iPhone in China. But the approval for running the entire system was developed and, most importantly, synchronized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which is a department of the Chinese government.

According to Apple's support site, if you install the eSIM of a carrier from China onto that of A3518, presumably the Chinese model, then other models will refuse the same.

This will mean that to activate the eSIM, the customer must go to the store of the carrier and authenticate themselves.

Pricing and Release Schedule for Pre-Order of Apple iPhone Air

According to the poster, the pre-order will start in early October and open for the general public later that week.

The price will be at least Rs. 98,999 approximately.

This might be the first step toward the widespread use of eSIM in a country where physical SIM cards have normally flooded the market. The market has to be put on the drawing board with the eSIM-only iPhone being for sale because of those legal challenges.

Hurdles and Optimism

In China, the eSIM-only iPhone is bound to cross many technical and legal hurdles.

Some analysts have figured out that such restrictions exist in the court's arch-nemesis of government control and surveillance policies.

Therefore, any owner taking the Apple Air outside of China now may lose the opportunity of using the phone with eSIM profiles by Chinese operators.

Subsequently, many consider pre-orders and machine endorsement as a landmark in smartphone technology development within mainland China. If your readers belong to the tech-savvy community or smartphone purchasers in China or are iPhone users, then this news article would appeal most to such category of people.