Apple’s Find My iPhone Useless in China!

Just 5 minutes ago I left my office in Qingdao, China and headed out in to the scorching summer heat!
As soon as I hit the trendier area of town I was approached by a man (not for the first time) with an iPhone 4 in hand, “3000 (Yuan)” he said, I replied with a polite “No”. “2000” he replied. Again I declined! “1000!” was his answer!

And I am sure he would have continued to reduce his asking price!

1000 Yuan ($154) for an iPhone 4! I was seriously tempted, but turned down the bargain price for the obviously stolen Apple iPhone 4.

This got me thinking about my personal phone, perhaps I should set up Apples ‘Find My iPhone’, which is free for iOS devices with iOS 4.2 and above.

So that’s what I’ve done. I taken a brisk walk to the coffee shop, followed the instructions from oh how to set up the free ‘Find My iPhone’ service:

And I’ve logged in to me.com to check if everything is working!

And it doesn't!

As you can see Apple are relying on Google’s mapping servers to serve up the location of my iPhone, but due to Google’s limited mapping capabilities in China, not to mention the dispute they are currently going through with the Chinese mapping committee, my phone’s location cannot be displayed!

Zooming out doesn't help either!

Sure I can still lock the phone, wipe it and even send rude messages to anyone who might get my phone without my permission, but I won’t be able to hunt them down and get my phone back!

With iPhone 4’s, both black and white flying out of stores left and right from Chinese stores, and with Apple making China a top priority for sales and marketing, you would think that Jobs and Co. would try their best to protect iOS users in China!

If Apple are truly committed to the Chinese market they need to catch up with what China is doing/allowing.
China’s Baidu.com offers a great mapping service which could be used to help me find my phone, YouTube could be replaced with a built in Youku or Tudou application and what about adding a Chinese calendar to the springboard?

With the imminent release of the iPhone 5 and presumably iOS 5 I wonder if we will see Apple shift in a more China friendly direction.

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