Chinese Ifans buy two million Iphone 5s in opening weekend

GADGET DESIGNER Apple announced today that it sold over two million Iphone 5 units in China in its first weekend of sales, despite expectations that it wouldn't do so well.

Apple announced that Chinese buyers quickly snatched up two million Iphone 5 smartphones in just three days, making it the country's best selling Iphone rollout ever.

According to reports, sales in Apple's own-brand stores were pretty slow, but customers ran to sign up at China Unicom and China Telecom to buy the latest Idevice. China Unicom reportedly had 300,000 preorders for the device, 100,000 more than it had for the Iphone 4S.

"Customer response to Iphone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China," said Apple CEO Tim Cook. "China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products."

Despite these record sales, Apple's share price continued to fall. After the Iphone 5's debut in China, Apple's shares fell 3.8 percent on Friday to $509.79, and Citi Research downgraded Apple's stock on Sunday from "buy" to "neutral".

While we doubt that Apple is struggling to shift smartphones in the US, this drop in its share price coincides with Walmart's surprise Apple Iphone 5 price drop. The US big box retailer has lowered the price of Apple's latest smartphone from $199 to $127, and has reduced the price of the Iphone 4S to just $47. µ