Yesterday we shared a report from Sina Tech showing that Apple’s official China online store had added the 3G iPad 2 — not yet released in China — to its products, though the iPads were only visible via the search function. Since the 3G iPad 2 hasn’t been officially announced in China yet, it’s no surprise the products have since been deleted. Now searching for “3G iPad 2” produces no results.
And yet, the 3G tablet is most definitely coming. Yesterday afternoon, Sina Tech posted a screenshot showing that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has already approved a W-CDMA 3G device for Apple that has the same product ID number as the AT&T 3G iPad 2:
The screenshot shows that the permit was issued by MIIT on August 29, and will be effective throguh August 29, 2014. That’s further evidence that we’ll probably see the official launch of the 3G iPad 2 quite soon.
Since China Unicom is the only Chinese carrier with a W-CDMA 3G network, we can safely assume the 3G iPad 2 will be coming only to China Unicom, or at the very least will be released first through China Unicom. That’s no surprise, as Unicom has been Apple’s partner for all of its 3G device launches to date.
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