According to a report that came in a few minutes ago, executives from China Mobile have met with Apple CEO Steve Jobs to discuss the possibility of officially introducing the iPhone 5 on their network. Currently, China Mobile has no partnership with Apple.
Reuters report that China Mobile executives flew to Cupertino and had a meeting with the father of Apple, Mr. Steve Jobs himself. They intend to ink a deal with Apple under which they will officially start selling the iPhone in China, on their personalized network standard. As of now, China Mobile does not sell the iPhone through its retail network, only China Unicom, which is China's state owned second largest carrier, officially sells the iPhone in China.
As of now, China Mobile has 7.44 million iPhones running on its network even though it doesn't sell the iPhone. However, if Apple does sign a deal with China Mobile allowing it to sell the iPhone in China, it would mean that Apple would have to build an iPhone particularly for this network due to the fact that China Mobile runs a 3G network based on its own TDSCDMA network which isn't found anywhere else in the world. Due to this, the iPhones that are currently running on China Mobile, don't have access to 3G download speeds because of the incompatible network standards.
This means that Apple would have to create a China Mobile specific iPhone if both of these companies reach an agreement. It should be kept in mind that Apple has been trying hard to break in to the Chinese market which is very "Apple hungry" as we would say, due to the fact that a lot of cheap iPhone replicas are manufactured there, not to mention the vast amount of fake Apple stores that have cropped up in the country.
Only recently we reported that executives from China Unicom went to Cupertino in order to finalize the deal of iPhone 5. Seems like it has finally dawned upon China Mobile that they can make substantial profits if they start offering the iPhone as well. Due to the fact that the next generation iPhone release is quite near, we can safely presume that even if an iPhone does come to China Mobile, its going to be a TDSCDMA version of the iPhone 5.
Word is that Apple will go ahead with the USA iPhone 5 release in September prior to accepting iPhone 5 pre-orders on September 30. A global iPhone 5 release is slated for October as per the rumours we have heard up till now. There is little doubt in our minds regarding Apple actually declining China Mobile's bid to offer the iPhone through its retail network. China Mobile is the largest mobile network in China and the world. So Apple would definitely want to target that huge subscriber base.
That's all we have for now, if you have any question regarding the iPhone 5 or the mysterious iCloud iPhone, you can either comment here or tweet @theiphoneism for a prompt response from our Apple ninjas.