Today is an important day for the mobile industry, especially for Apple and the iPhone. The iPhone has hit China – you can go and check out their App Store on iTunes already. This is very early days regarding the market (Mobilcrunch is unsure if anyone cares at all) as well as the device itself (its missing WiFi), but still there is reason to be excited.

At this point, there are about 710 million overall cellular subscribers in China, so even if just a fraction of them goes and buys an iPhone, it means a substantial increase in potential users to reach with your app. It is exciting to see how quickly a single iPhone developer can go international through the App Store. However, there are still many questions to be answered in this regard. Internationalization (language and, if possible, product features) and pricing are, among many others, challenges that a developer will certainly face. The same holds true for marketing your app in different nations.

Again, of course, we are at the beginning of an ongoing development here. Right now, it might be enough for you to focus your marketing on the biggest market (the U.S.) or that of your home country.

But in general, influence of nationality on the effectiveness of different marketing channels is one thing that we will definitely focus on in the future. This can become complex quite quickly. There is a lot to learn here and we think that finding out what works and what does not in which country in terms of marketing performance will become more and more important. If you think mid- to long-term and aim to gather knowledge on how and where to optimize your marketing and thus your own business profitability, this is a topic you cannot ignore. Neither can we.

So , bottom line, to us the iPhone being sold in China seems like a huge step for the entire mobile industry and we are curious how things will develop throughout the next months and years.