China Telecom officially confirmed that the company has been in talks with Apple to sell CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) iPhones in China, the China Business News reported on July 14, adding that should they reach the consensus as planned, China Telecom's subscribers will be able to purchase the new generation iPhone by year-end 2011. Further details regarding the possible tie-up were not yet disclosed.
Meanwhile, China Mobile recently announced that 5.6 million iPhone users had been accessing the mobile services provided by its wireless network by the end of May and in May alone, an additional of approximately 700,000 iPhone 4 users were added to China Mobile's network, the China Daily News reported. China Mobile has been in long talks with Apple, which is speculated to launch an iPhone based on China Mobile's TD-LTE (Time Division-Long Term Evolution) technology if a mutual consensus is reached, according to the same source. In the face of the possibility that the company will not be an exclusive seller of Apple iPhone, China Unicom has begun changing its product strategy to promote other Smartphone models made by other manufacturers instead of relying on the iPhone alone. As of 31 May, China Mobile had 611 million subscribers, aiming to have more than 50 million subscriber net additions by year-end 2011. In May alone, China Mobile had an addition of 32 million 3G users, followed by China Unicom's 22.1 million and China Telecom's 19.7 million.