The days of dual-currency credit cards and iPhone hacking in China are over. Apple's app store will now be accepting the Chinese yuan.
Users can pay with bank cards from more than a dozen major banks in China, Penn Olson reports.
It's about time. Apple's revenue in China skyrocketed from $3 billion in 2010 to $13 billion in 2011. And a recent survey showed that Apple overpowered Nokia to become China's leading smartphone brand. Basically, China is on its way to becoming Apple's largest market in the world, but its app store situation was a pain.
A year ago, Apple did open up a Chinese version of its iTunes app store using simplified Chinese characters, the Wall Street Journal reports. But users needed to pay with a dual-currency credit card and many resorted to jailbreaking their iPhones so they could download pirated apps somewhere else.
Apple's move is also a way to combat iTunes ‘black cards’ -- hacked credit card accounts used to put money into temporary iTunes accounts.
By making things easy and legal for users in China, Apple stands to sell millions of more apps than before.
