Apple's iPhone 5 found a new home in over 30 more countries on Friday including China. The combination smartphone and iPod was previously available in 48 countries, and will make its official appearance in an additional 22 countries on December 21.
Along with China, today's iPhone 5 launch kicked off in Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, 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.
Next week the iPhone 5 will be available in 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 as well.
The iPhone is already a wildly popular smartphone around the world, and with availability in even more locations it will likely draw in even more customers. The iPhone's popularity helped give Apple 26.7 percent of the LTE wireless data market worldwide, coming in behind Samsung's top spot with 40 percent.
The iPhone 5 sports a 4-inch widescreen Retina Display, 8 megapixel rear-facing digital camera and FaceTime HD front-facing camera, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Apple's new Lightning connector, and more. It is prices starting at US$199 for the 16 GB model and is available in black or white.