China Mobile May Consider An iPhone Deal

[karthick]

China Mobile May Consider An iPhone Deal

It seems like after all, Apple's iPhone will officially conquer the Chinese market. Reuters reports that China Mobile Chief Executive Wang Jianzhou expressed his interest to start the talks with Apple regarding the iPhone distribution.

"We have not yet officially begun talks with Apple over the iPhone problem," China Mobile Chief Executive Wang Jianzhou told reporters on the sidelines of an annual parliament advisory body meeting, Reuters informs.

"As long as our customers want this kind of product, we will keep all options open," he added.

China Mobile Communications Corporation, also known as China Mobile or CMCC, represents the largest mobile phone operator from China, as well the largest mobile phone operator in the world if ranked by the number of subscribers, which is about 349.66 million. China Mobile is owned by the People's Republic of China government and it has more than 119,000 employees.

Last year there were rumors that Apple's officials have tried to nail a deal with China Mobile, but nothing was officially confirmed.

However, in November, China Unicom, the second largest Chinese mobile carrier, said also that they would be open to talks with Apple.

Last month a report released by In-Stat revealed that there were already nearly 400,000 unlocked iPhones in China at the end of 2007.

"According to China Mobile, the biggest wireless carrier, in China there were about 400,000 cracked iPhones using its cellular network service at the end of 2007, representing one out of every 10 iPhone shipments announced officially by Apple. The figure surprised us as it is fourfold of that we estimated before" wrote Anty Zheng, Content Manager In-Stat China in a report released on February 15.

Apple has sold in 2007 3.7 million iPhones and nailing down a deal with China Mobile could help the company to reach its goal to sell 10 million units until the end of  2008.

Also, last years in December there were rumors that Steve Jobs met NTT DoCoMo President Masao Nakamura in San Francisco to discuss details about a potential partnership between the two companies. NTT is the largest mobile operator in Japan, controlling half of the market.

Source : eFlux