China Mobile, the largest operator in the world by the number of subscribers, has been negotiating with Apple for many years to manufacture an iPhone that will work on this operator's network. Apple produces an iPhone 4 terminal compatible with the CDMA standard and it seems that it will soon produce a new model compatible with the LTE standard of the China Mobile network. The president of the company a declared during a conference taking place in Switzerland that there are discussions that could lead to the development of an iPhone 5 compatible with this network, but for now no one from Apple has confirmed the rumor.
"We hope that when they develop the next-generation models, since Apple can create CDMA, they can also consider developing TD-SCDMA, China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the Sina Technology news portal. These two years we have been discussing the issue. Right now the situation is moving forward. Apple has made it clear they will support TD-LTE," Wang said in Davos, Switzerland.
If Apple has started the production of CDMA terminals, then we will probably also see terminals compatible with the LTE standard, especially since we are talking about the adoption of the terminal by the largest mobile operator in the world, which means that Apple would have a lot to gain from this move. In China, the iPhone terminal is only available through the operator China Unicom, which has "only" 167 million subscribers compared to the 584 that China Mobile has. Apple made more than 2 billion dollars in revenue from the China chair and in these conditions, so imagine what an operation with half a billion subscribers could bring them.
