Within just four days of its launch, Apple's iPhone 4 sold 100,000 products in China, and received orders for 100,000 more.
Every one of those users who logged on to Apple's latest new product would have been led to think the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh was a part of China, if they went by the phone's maps.
Apple has been told to show the entire state within China's borders, according to local media reports here on Wednesday.
A map from the latest iPhone 4, which launched here on Saturday amid much media attention, shows the entire region under Chinese territory.
An image was posted on the popular China-based website the Shanghaiist. International maps usually show the region as disputed, though maps in India and in China show their respective territorial claims. ‘Even as the region is administered by India, any Chinese iPhone will show that it belongs to China,” the website reported.
Owners of the new iPhone had also found that access to international maps had been disallowed on Apple sets sold in China. Such maps are accessible in China through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which thousands of Chinese Internet users employ to scale the censorship restrictions in China, popularly known as the Great Firewall.
More than 200,000 Chinese are expected to become owners of the iPhone 4 in coming weeks, following its Saturday launch. State-run China Unicom, Apple's official partner in China, said 100,000 units had been sold within four days of its official launch, while orders had been placed for 100,000 more. In addition to these purchases, thousands of handsets had also been sold through unofficial dealers in Beijing's sprawling electronics black market in Zhongguancun, according toreports in the local media.
This year, China has tightened regulations on map-makers and surveyors, to ensure all maps show only the government's territorial claims, whether with regard to India or even on the South China Sea.
Any international map which shows territories as disputed is blocked by China's Internet restrictions.
