iPhone in China is a dream for millions of Apple fans out there. Despite rumors of over a million iPhone 2G being illegally smuggled outside the US (majority in Hong Kong / China); Apple is still finding it difficult to get a straight entry to the Chinese market. Apparently China’s biggest telecom operator ‘China Mobile’ has problems with the App Store, this had pushed the talks with China Unicom further. However, now Apple seems to be in another trouble with the Chinese government not approving WiFi enabled iPhone’s going on sale.
So while, China Unicom seems to be all set to release the iPhone before year end, it might well be introduced with some software lock to prevent usage of WiFi (at the same time Apple expects to get the license for WiFi enabled iPhone’s in a few months).