Long time followers of Apple’s impending landing in China will be familiar with the long and twisting road that they have been taking over the past few months in trying to get their product into the hand of the Chinese public, but the process keeps getting side tracked or railroaded and has not ended in much of a break through for any of the sides involved. Recently, Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, the largest mobile service provider in the nation of China, announced that China Mobile is again back at the negotiating table with Apple, this time trying to strike up a bargain to help it compete against China Unicom, its rival for market share. Since Apple and China Unicom have a non-exclusive arrangement, it is possible for China Mobile to create a deal for the distribution of the iPhone through China Mobile’s segment of the market.
Experts have long predicted that China Mobile would need to come to an agreement with Apple in order to expand its own market and bring its loyal customers what they want, but so far they have been divided on the best ways to pull that off. The change could come from China Mobile being able to offer its customers a low priced EDGE 2G model iPhone which would run over the EDGE network that is already used by China Mobile customers – who number just over half a billion in all. An upgrade to 3G has not yet captured the interest of most Chinese subscribers right now so the 2G has seemed the easiest solution.