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Hungry for Chinese yuan, Apple now accepts currency for App Store purchases
Apple made a fundamental change with its payment policy today in China, as the company now accepts the yuan for all purchases made on the App Store. Previously, customers were required to hold dual-currency credit cards -- merely to drop a couple dollars on Jet Car Stunts and the like -- which turned a significant portion of iOS users to the jailbreaking community. The higher-ups in Cupertino hope its newly pronounced love for the yuan will help drive millions of additional app sales while bringing customers back into the company's ecosystem. Currently, 20 Chinese banks are on board with Apple to help facilitate the shift, which certainly shouldn't mind adding a few more yuan to their coffers. [Chinese yuan photo via Shutterstock]
Dell Vostro 360 unveiled in China, a decently priced all-in-Yuan
Dell's Chinese site just took the wraps off the Vostro 360 all-in-one, which we already glimpsed in some prematurely released support documents. The product page actually calls it the 'Vostro Success 360' to hammer home its productivity focus, as if the inclusion of Windows 7 Professional Edition wasn't enough. Other specs are pretty much as expected: a choice of touchscreen or non-touchscreen variants of the 23-inch Full HD WLED display, Intel i3 or i5 processors with the H61 chipset and up to a terabyte of 7200RPM storage. There's also a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M for those out-of-hours LAN parties. The 4,999 Yuan price tag for the base model translates to a respectable $780, but we've no clue as to when this office beauty will arrive outside the Chung Kuo. [Thanks, Czar]
China legislates 20% tax rate on virtual currency profits
While much of the world's gold farming activity is based in mainland China, the black market industry operates in violation of the law. Despite this, a large part of the problem in curbing illegal activities in China is that there's a substantial divide between what the law states is illegal and the actual enforcement of those laws. This may well be the case with the law passed last week by China's State Administration of Taxation, which will impose a personal income tax rate of 20% on profits made from virtual currency.Juliet Ye at The Wall Street Journal's "China Journal" blog reports: "The policy would cover China's legions of online gamers, who can use online virtual currency to buy better equipment and new powers for their online warriors. But it also affects millions of others who use virtual currencies on instant-messaging services and Web portals." The widespread use of virtual currencies in China spurred last year's restrictions on exchanging virtual currency into RMB. If the new law becomes a reality rather than a technicality in the lives of China's internet users, it will be a substantial change in virtual economics in the country.
