Siri, how do you say profit in Chinese? 
 
 One answer Apple's digital assistant might consider giving is: start selling the iPhone 4S in China. And starting on Jan. 13th, Apple will do just that. 
 
 The company said Wednesday that China will be among 22 countries that soon will get the newest iPhone, one of Apple's hottest-selling yet. The iPhone now accounts for nearly half of Apple's annual revenue, and some analysts believe it earns the company more than 60% of its profits. 
 
 China is one of the world's largest mobile device markets, with close to a billion cellphone users by some estimates. Apple currently partners with China Unicom, one of the larger carriers with close to 200 million cellular subscribers. 
 
 Apple said Wednesday it had no current plans to announce a partnership with China Mobile, the country's largest carrier with more than 630 million subscribers (a user base that, somewhat amazingly, is more than twice the size of the U.S. population). But for months now Apple has been rumored to be nailing down a deal with China Mobile, and millions of the carriers' customers are already using the iPhone by modifying the device to work on their network. 
 
 Will Siri actually be able to speak and understand Mandarin? Eventually, yes. An Apple spokesman said the company plans to add official language support in 2012 — and that will include Chinese. But Siri won't yet be multilingual when the phone hits Chinese stores this month. 
 
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 Photo: A couple look at an iPhone in Beijing in November. Credit: Diego Azubel / EPA ||||| Computerworld - Apple today announced it would start selling the iPhone 4S in mainland China a week from this Friday -- Jan. 13. 
 
 The iPhone 4S was expected to eventually make it to the People's Republic of China (PRC) -- it debuted in Hong Kong on Nov. 11 -- but some analysts had forecast that Apple would move faster. 
 
 Two months ago, Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities said he expected the iPhone 4S to reach China before the end of the calendar year. 
 
 Today, White noted the Chinese iPhone 4S launch, but maintained that his projection of a faster iPhone 4S rollout had come true. 
 
 "As we expected, this represents the fastest iPhone launch in Apple's history with availability in over 90 countries," White told clients in a short research note today. 
 
 By comparison, Apple had placed the iPhone 4 in 105 countries by the end of September 2011, more than a year after its introduction. 
 
 Apple launched the iPhone 4S on Oct. 14. 
 
 Siri, the voice-activated assistant -- and the most-lauded feature of the iPhone 4S -- won't be able to understand Mandarin when the smartphone launches next week, White said. Apple today stuck to its previous commitment to bring Mandarin comprehension to Siri some time this year. 
 
 China Unicom, the only Apple-sanctioned carrier on the mainland, will start selling the iPhone 4S on Jan. 13 as well. 
 
 Talk of other Chinese mobile carriers, including the country's largest, China Mobile, remain just that for now. "We expect China Telecom to be added this year and we believe China Mobile will eventually become part of the Apple ecosystem," White said today. 
 
 Based on the quick sell-out of the iPhone 4S in Hong Kong -- supplies were exhausted within minutes at its one Apple store on launch day -- White also anticipates a run on the iPhone 4S in the PRC. "We believe the demand for the iPhone 4S in Mainland China to be unprecedented," White said. 
 
 China has increasingly been a major factor in Apple's massive revenues. In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2011, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong generated 16% of the company's total income. 
 
 And China, White reminded clients today, is the largest smartphone market in the world. 
 
 "The total mobile phone subscriber base in China was 963.7 million in November, and [the] high-end mobile phone market in China is estimated at 100-125 million subscribers or ~$70 billion," said White. 
 
 Apple has not revealed prices for the iPhone 4S in China, but most experts believe it will carry the same tag as the iPhone 4 did in 2010: 4,999 yuan ($793) for the 16GB model and 5,999 yuan ($952) for the 32GB model. Those prices are sans a long-term carrier contract. 
 
 The 8GB iPhone 4, which sells for $99 in the U.S. with a two-year contract, goes for 3,880 yuan ($633) in China without a contract. 
 
 More than 20 other countries -- including Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Senegal -- will also see the iPhone 4S selling on Jan. 13. 
 
 Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com. 
 
 See more articles by Gregg Keizer. 
 
 Read more about Smartphones in Computerworld's Smartphones Topic Center. ||||| Apple Beijing Shop Pelted With Eggs as IPhone Debut Botched 
 
 By Bloomberg News 
 
 (Adds background on Hong Kong crowds in 11th paragraph.) 
 
 Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc., whose skill at hyping new products helped make it the world’s most valuable technology company, became a victim of its own success after a botched introduction of its iPhone 4S in China led it to suspend sales. 
 
 Would-be customers who waited overnight as temperatures dropped below minus 9 degrees Celsius reacted with fury after the company’s main store in Beijing’s Sanlitun district failed to open. The company sold out of the handsets at stores that did open and later halted sales of all iPhones at its five retail outlets in the country “for the time being,” spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said by phone. 
 
 Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. At 7:15 a.m., people began chanting “Open the door!” and “Liars!” after an unidentified man said over a bullhorn that the phone wouldn’t go on sale today, without giving an explanation. The store stayed closed “for safety reasons,” Wu said. Beijing police temporarily cordoned off the shop after it was pelted with eggs by the crowd. 
 
 “This is a debacle,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based retail advising company, said in a phone interview today. “Everybody knows there will be massive numbers of people when Apple has this kind of a launch. This shows very poor retail management ability.” 
 
 ‘Very Angry’ 
 
 Elsewhere in the capital, the introduction went more smoothly. At Apple’s store in the Xidan neighborhood, the company handed out 1,000 tickets good for the purchase of a maximum two iPhone 4S handsets each. In Shanghai, a store in the Pudong district opened an hour early to accommodate the waiting crowds before selling out of the phones immediately. 
 
 “I’m very angry,” said Li Yun, 59, a retiree who said she tried to buy the device on behalf of her daughter at the People’s Square store in Shanghai. “They had said they would start selling the iPhone 4S at 7 a.m. but I was told they were already sold out by the time I got here at 6 a.m.” 
 
 About 60 migrant workers, hired by resellers to line up last night outside Apple’s store in Beijing’s Xidan, weren’t paid the 120 yuan ($19) they were promised because they failed to get an iPhone 4S after the 12-hour wait, according to several of them, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. They came by bus from a labor market in the suburbs and received only a 10-yuan food allowance, they said. 
 
 Expansion Slowed 
 
 The crush of crowds at the stores is a reflection of the company’s decision to slow the opening of outlets in China, Rein said. 
 
 Apple in February 2010 announced a plan for 25 stores in China over two years, then slowed the expansion. Including the Hong Kong shop, which started selling the iPhone 4s on Nov. 11, there are six in the country. 
 
 “There isn’t enough product in enough retail points,” Rein said. “If they had more points of sale, it would disperse the crowds.” 
 
 Hundreds of people lined up outside the store in Hong Kong’s IFC Mall for several nights when the new iPhone went on sale, prompting police to use metal barricades to keep order. 
 
 Apple has more than 300 outlets worldwide and planned to sell the latest iPhone model through its three stores in Shanghai, two in Beijing, the two main cities in the world’s largest mobile-phone market. 
 
 Second-Largest Market 
 
 The Cupertino, California-based company sold 5.6 million iPhones in China in the first nine months of last year, giving it a 10.4 percent share of the smartphone market in the third quarter, according to research company Gartner Inc. Apple’s Wu earlier declined to comment on the outlook for iPhone 4S sales in China. 
 
 Apple’s stores in China generate the highest traffic and highest revenue of any of the company’s stores in the world, on average, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said last January. 
 
 The maker of Macintosh computers and the iPad tablet increased its revenue in China to $13 billion in the year ended Sept. 24, from $3 billion a year earlier, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in October. China accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s revenue in the fiscal fourth-quarter, making it the company’s biggest national market after the U.S. 
 
 Foxconn Suicides 
 
 Today’s confrontation wasn’t the first during a product introduction at the Sanlitun store, which opened in 2008 as Apple’s first in the country. In May, the store was temporarily closed when a group that lined up outside to buy the iPad 2 “became unruly,” Wu of Apple said at the time. Four people were injured and a glass door to the shop was smashed, the China Daily reported. 
 
 The violence adds to challenges for Apple in China, where company supplier Foxconn Technology Group was hit by a series of employee suicides. The Taipei-based company installed safety nets on buildings, raised pay and hired counselors in 2010 after at least 10 workers killed themselves. Apple also commissioned a review by a team of suicide-prevention experts. 
 
 China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., the nation’s second-largest carrier, is the only one of the country’s three service providers offering the iPhone with a service contract. The company sent a text message to subscribers trumpeting free home delivery of the new handset through its online store. 
 
 Yellow Bulls 
 
 “Buy the iPhone 4S without lining up!” China Unicom said in a text sent to subscribers in Beijing. Unicom’s online shop made the device available at midnight, the text said. 
 
 While Apple suspended iPhone 4s sales at its China shops, the handsets remain available on its website as well as from Unicom and resellers, Wu said. 
 
 Sophia Tso, a spokeswoman at China Unicom in Hong Kong, didn’t immediately reply to messages left by phone and e-mail seeking comment. 
 
 The Unicom site lists the 16-gigabyte model for 5,880 yuan ($932), with different levels of subsidies. The handset is free to users committing to a three-year plan for 286 yuan a month or a two-year plan costing 386 yuan a month, the website said. 
 
 The crowd around Apple’s main Beijing store diminished after police lifted the cordon and the doors remained closed. Some waited a while longer for a chance to buy the phone, which includes voice recognition software that doesn’t work with Mandarin, before giving up. 
 
 “We were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees,” Wu said. 
 
 The fracas outside the store was caused by yellow bulls, a euphemism for people who buy the phones for sale at a markup, Tony Si, an 18-year-old bartender, said outside the store. The disorder, police response and store closing was their fault, not Apple’s, though he is still disappointed, he said. 
 
 “I’m angry because they said they’d sell it, and now they aren’t selling it,” Si said. 
 
 --Edmond Lococo, with assistance from Margaret Conley and Stephanie Wong in Shanghai, Shiyin Chen in Singapore, Feifei Shen and Bloomberg News in Beijing and Mark Lee in Hong Kong. Editors: Dave McCombs, Michael Tighe 
 
 To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Edmond Lococo in Beijing at elococo@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net
– Apple is about to get more than a billion new potential customers for the iPhone 4s—but many of them may find it tricky communicating with Siri just yet. The smartphone will be launched in China and 21 other countries next week, and while its voice-activated virtual assistant currently only speaks English, French, and German, Apple says it plans to add Mandarin later this year, the Los Angeles Times reports. "Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts, " Apple CEO Tim Cook said, noting that the iPhone 4S will soon be available in more than 90 countries and regions, making it the fastest-ever iPhone rollout. Apple currently partners with the carrier China Unicom, but insiders tell Computer World that it is close to forging a deal with the country's behemoth carrier, China Mobile, which boasts a whopping 630 million subscribers.