We talked about China and Apple before. For Apple, China is a big market and they sure are going aggressive there. However Apple’s flagship product, the iPhone isn’t available on China Mobile, China’s largest carrier yet. China has over 10 million iPhone users already and they can’t even use the 3G network provided to them, this sure gave us an estimate of how popular the iPhone is in China. However, Apple’s world phone iPhone 4S might not come to China Mobile and would likely stay with China Unicom.
China Mobile is doing its best to give offers and WiFi hot spots to its users (the iPhone users on China Mobile are restricted to 2G speeds.) China Mobile is expected to add as many as 1 million WiFi hotspots across China in the next three years, that’s some real commitment to give alternatives. China Mobile has also been vocal about its discussions with Apple on LTE iPhones and Tim Cook was also spotted in China visiting them.
Given all this hype, Apple has rejected the TD-CDMA standard and refrained from adding compatibility for the same in iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S is a world phone and operates both CDMA and GSM, thus running the same hardware on Verizon and AT&T in US, but the same won’t extend to the two carriers (China Mobile and China Unicom) in China. China Mobile would hope for a LTE iPhone whenever it goes official, but for now, if you are in China, your best hopes is to get a iPhone 4S either at 2G speeds or with Unicom 🙂