{"id":420436,"date":"2025-09-13T06:38:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T06:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/420436\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T06:38:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T06:38:39","slug":"iphone-air-launch-delayed-in-china-over-esim-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/420436\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhone Air launch delayed in China over eSIM issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Apple has postponed preorders of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/771942\/apple-iphone-17-air-announcement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iPhone Air<\/a> in mainland China, which were due to open today, with regulatory issues around eSIM almost certainly to blame.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The Chinese store page for the super-slim iPhone says that \u201crelease information will be updated later\u201d (translated from Chinese). Apple had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/2025\/09\/introducing-iphone-air-a-powerful-new-iphone-with-a-breakthrough-design\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">originally announced<\/a> that the Air would go on preorder in China at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/772748\/iphone-17-pro-air-preorder-price-how-to-buy-release-date\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">same time as in the US<\/a>, 8AM ET today, with full availability from September 19th. Its other three new iPhones \u2014 the 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max \u2014 are all available to preorder now, and ship from next week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The issue is most likely Apple\u2019s decision to make the Air eSIM-only worldwide. eSIM has never been widely available in mainland China, and phones manufactured for the local market still don\u2019t include support (which has tripped me up a few times when I\u2019ve gone traveling in Europe with a review unit of a Chinese phone!). None of Apple\u2019s previous iPhone support eSIM in China, nor do any of the three iPhone 17 models.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20250909233344\/https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/123879\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earlier this week<\/a> Apple\u2019s support page for eSIM in China declared that \u201cChina Unicom is the only supported eSIM carrier for iPhone.\u201d That page has <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/123879\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">now been updated<\/a>, and says that \u201cpending regulatory approval\u201d all three of the country\u2019s state-owned main carriers will offer eSIM, including China Mobile and China Telecom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The South China Morning Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/big-tech\/article\/3325322\/apple-postpones-iphone-air-release-china-beijing-keeps-tight-grip-esim-approval\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports<\/a> that Apple has told Chinese media that it is \u201cworking closely with regulatory authorities to bring [the iPhone Air] to China as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple has postponed preorders of the iPhone Air in mainland China, which were due to open today, with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1662,51,1685,1666,547,12,5471,326,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-420436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-gadgets","11":"tag-iphone","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-phones","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115195615848337406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}