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China Mobile In Talks With Apple Over IPhone; Deal Unlikely

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Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile’s CEO, has said the company is in talks with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) over offering the iPhone, although he’s not interested in the revenue-sharing model Apple has wrangled out of other carriers around the world, reports ComputerWorld. He said his customers were interested in the iPhone as a “fashionable product”, and then took a shot at music-playing phones: “Wang took a shot at today’s music playing phones. When phone makers add music players to their handsets they tend to end up with a good phone and a bad music player, he said, and vice-versa for makers of music players.” Which is a strange comment to make in the same speech which talked up the iPhone… Unsurprisingly, Wang is also against sideloading music. In terms of China Mobile’s music service, Wang said that “over 60 million people are using the service, and over 240 million music ringtones have been downloaded”.

UPDATE: China Mobile is unlikely to actually offer the iPhone in the near future, the clarification coming after the market bid up the shares of both companies 10 percent on the news reports Reuters. As well as the fact that the Chinese carriers are still reluctant to sign revenue sharing agreements, other hurdles mentioned in the article include the fact that the iPhone uses locked SIM cards and the Chinese market doesn’t (although I suspect the locked SIMs are related directly to the revenue sharing agreement) and the need for Chinese-language SMS.

Nov 14, 2007 2:44 AM ET

Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Gadgets, Companies, Apple, Countries, Asia, China

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