According to Xinhua, during a conference held on Saturday in
China's Hainan Province,
Wang Jianzhou, the chairman of China Mobile, admitted that the company has not
started formal talks with Apple regarding the distribution of iPhone.
Still, Wang Jianzhou admitted that both companies intend to
cooperate, but it seems like details about the business models and
commercialization have prevented the start of the formal talks.
In fact, Wang Jianzhou did not say anything new. Last month,
Reuters reported that 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 at the time
"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.
According to Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile
subscribers currently totaled more than 380 million, nearly 30 percent of the
country's total population, Xinhua noted.
Last year there were rumors that Apple’s officials tried to
nail a deal with China Mobile, but nothing was officially confirmed.
Although iPhone is not officially available in China, a
report released by In-Stat in February 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.
