iPhone 5 Available in Malaysia on 14 December

In my previous post, I mentioned about the difficulties of supply chain that Apple was facing and iPhone 5 would only be available in Malaysia next year. Surprisingly, Apple managed to overcome this issue and is going to introduce iPhone 5 to more than 50 countries in December.

According to press info from Apple, below is the list of countries that are able to get iPhone 5 this month:


Dec 7: South Korea

Dec 14: Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, Grenada, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Dec 21: Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia, Uganda and Vietnam.

What about the iPad with Retina Display (iPad 4) and iPad Mini? It is available in China starting today (7 December) and the good news is it is also available in Apple Store Malaysia now!

The selling price for iPad mini starts from RM 999, while the iPad with Retina Display starts from RM 1499. The iPad mini is selling cheaper than iPod Touch 5G (RM 1049) in Malaysia. Start shopping for your new gadgets now through Apple Store Online!

iPhone 5, iPad Mini & iPad 4 Launch Date

It is already 2 months since iPhone 5 was officially launched. Many of us are guessing when the Apple's latest product line up of iPhone 5, iPad Mini & iPad 4 will be officially available in Malaysia.

According to the news report of the Malay Mail, iPhone 5, iPad Mini & iPad 4 are very likely to be released in Malaysia after 2nd January 2013 due to 3 main reasons:

1. Apple is focusing to fulfill orders for Christmas sales in its key markets.
2. Apple may be facing constraints in the supply of its retina display touchscreens.
3. Foxconn, the manufacturer for Apple's products, is having difficulty to keep up with the demand.

If you are interested in Apple smartphone or tablet, should you just go ahead and purchase the current models this year or wait for the new models next year? Let's look at the performance benchmark of Apple iOS products done by Geekbench.

Based on the graph above, it's definitely worth to wait for the new models to arrive as both iPhone 5 and iPad 4 are more than 2 times more powerful than their predecessors. While for iPad Mini, its performance is slower than iPad 2.

A6 chip designed by Apple is a great success until there are rumours spreading around that Apple is looking to implement similar chips for its Mac and MacBook products to replace Intel chips.