After several rounds of fruitless talks with China’s largest carrier, Apple may ink an iPhone agreement with another carrier May 17, reports said Thursday.
China Unicom, the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier, confirmed it and Cupertino were discussing iPhone distribution.
“Yes, we are in talks with Apple Inc.,” a China Unicom executive told China Business News. The talks have been ongoing since October, according to the report.
Although China Unicom’s 130 million subscribers are no match for China Mobile’s 415 customers, the country’s second-largest mobile carrier has an ace up its sleeve: better compatibility with iPhone transmission technology.
China Unicom will launch May 17 a WCDMA network, the same technology used by Apple’s iPhone 3G. China Mobile, the first network Apple approached, insists on using TD-SCDMA, a standard developed by China.
Incompatible 3G technology has not been the only sticking point in 18 months of negotiations between Apple and China Mobile. Talks with China Mobile fell through after the giant carrier objected to control over Apple’s China App Store, according to a recent report.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
