Apple in Talks to Bring iPhone to China Mobile

Executives at China Mobile have had meetings with Steve Jobs about bringing the iPhone to the world’s largest mobile operator, according to a new report from Reuters,

The iPhone is currently available in China from carrier China Unicom. China Unicom is a much smaller operator than China Mobile, but that hasn’t curbed the country’s appetite for the phone. The iPhone 4 has proven to be popular in China, with 100,000 units sold in just four days.

In fact, China Mobile already has nearly 7.5 million iPhone users on its network, despite not selling the phones through its channels and even though iPhone devices running on China Mobile don’t have access to 3G.

China Mobile uses its own network standard, TDSCDMA, which differs from the two variants that Apple supports for the iPhone 4. Bringing a phone to China Mobile would essentially require creating a China-only variant of the iPhone.

In years past, this might have been looked at as untenable. However, the size of the Chinese market, as well as the fact that Apple now makes a CDMA variant (for carriers like Verizon), in addition to its GSM standard iPhone, makes a China Mobile iPhone much more likely.

In past earnings calls, Apple’s Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer have both talked about the Chinese market’s massive potential. The Apple Store in Beijing is already one of the most trafficked stores in the world. In fact, the Chinese appetite for Apple products is so insatiable, fake Apple stores have started to pop up all over the region.