Special to WorldTribune.com

By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com

One of the big surprises of the unveiling of the long-awaited iPhone6 is that China — Apple’s biggest market — is not among the eight countries where the smartphone will be first put on sale.

While Apple has teamed up with the state-owned giant China Mobile, the release of the potentially iconic phone has been held up by reasons including supply-chain hiccups — and government interference. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China’s powerful regulatory agency, has yet to give the go-ahead for the mass distribution of iPhone6.

The social media in Beijing and Shanghai have been replete with reports that Chinese authorities are worried about unspecified “security specifications” in the much-coveted gadget. In any event, Apple’s market share of smartphone sales in China has dropped to around 11 percent.

Since early this year, China-based multinationals ranging from IT firms such as Microsoft to automakers from the U.S. and Japan have been hit with charges of “monopolistic practices.”

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