Apple and China Mobile negotiating iPhone deal

Last night, it was announced that the iPhone 4S will be available on China’s third-largest carrier, China Telecom, on March 9th. Apple has been aggressively attacking China and has been reaping off its benefits. To benefit iPhone sales even more, Apple is continuing to pursue adding more carriers to support the iPhone in China.

Reuters reports China’s largest carrier, China Mobile, has been “aggressively negotiating” a deal with Apple, but some technical hurdles are holding back a launch for now…

China Mobile has been aggressively negotiating with Apple to sell the iPhone, but it uses a home-grown proprietary 3G technology called TD-SCDMA that Apple doesn’t support. It is, however, trialing its 4G TD-LTE network, with a commercial launch expected late this year or early in 2013, which will serve as a precursor to a deal with Apple.

China Mobile’s network operates on their own 3G technology called TD-SCDMA, which is a technology Apple doesn’t currently support on its iPhones. China Mobile is working however to rollout a 4G TD-LTE network by early 2013.

This afternoon, chip-maker Qualcomm unveiled a new ‘Gobi’ chip, that has support for China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA, and TD-LTE. If Apple uses the Gobi chip in their next iPhone coming later this year, they won’t have to wait to roll out the next iPhone on China Mobile — which could potentially mean big benefits.

During its earnings call last month, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook made note that China is a key emerging market for Apple products. Tim Cook made comment about how excited he was about the growth China’s sales were doing.

Being China’s largest carrier, China Mobile boasts a very impressive 600 million subscribers. 600 million subscribers that could help Apple sell a ton of iPhones.

The iPhone 4S is currently available on China’s second-largest carrier China Unicom and will be available on China’s third-largest carrier, China Telecom, March 9th.

What do you think of Apple’s continued raid into China?

[AppleInsider]