Details of the meeting were scant, but a China Mobile spokesman said it was regarding "matters of co-operation" in the region.
Down the road, he sees more good news to come, including a China Mobile distribution deal, and maybe, just maybe, an Apple television.
The customers that jumped ship due to the absence of a China Mobile deal are definitely a lost opportunity for Apple to gain market share, putting additional pressure on the company to sign a deal with China Mobile soon.
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It is not a surprise that Apple CEO Tim Cook paid a visit to China Mobile, but a statement from China Mobile appears to throw cold water on any immediate decision for China Mobile to carry iPhone.
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With reports that Cook has met with China Mobile, and now the news that Jobs has met several times, we are getting closer and closer to a legal China Mobile iPhone.
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While Apple already has deals with two Chinese mobile operators - China Unicom and China Telecom - it is yet to strike a partnership with China Mobile, the biggest operator in the world in terms of subscriber volume.
Rumors in the market suggest that Apple may be approaching a deal with China Mobile that has 500M subscribers and would provide Apple with a much larger total addressable market.
Examples include China Construction Bank, a huge backer of infrastructure projects, and China Mobile, a big mobile-phone carrier.
In a surprise move, China Mobile chose Lumia 920T, a phone based on Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 over iPhone 5.
The former handset king which has struggled to remain popular in the last few years, won an important victory in China this week, striking a subscription deal with China Mobile.
They've already inked a deal with China Mobile and their 100 million cellphone subscribers.
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One of the key factors to continued iPhone share increases will be the company striking a deal with China Mobile.
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We believe China Unicom is well positioned to benefit from a continued delay by China Mobile to launch the iPhone 5.
In 1994, they licensed a second mobile operator, China Unicom, under a rival ministry.
Earlier this month, the two biggest telecommunications companies in the world - Vodafone and China Mobile - created a consortium to bid for mobile licences in Burma.
Zhang will also take a post as a vice president at China Mobile.
Those investors, she expects, will seize on rallies to make their exit, or pile back in on good news like an upbeat quarter or a wireless deal with China Mobile.
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China remains a phenomenal mobile Internet consumer market.
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But knowing that the iPhone 5 has a Qualcomm LTE baseband that also supports the 3G network which China Mobile operates, such a deal should not be too far along.
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The China Mobile deal notwithstanding, China presents a huge opportunity to Apple.
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Share of market is down to 33 percent in a market growing 40 percent (but not forever.) I assume China Mobile is waiting for a low priced iPhone before putting Apple on its networks, maybe later this year.
It is at 2.5 GHz, a band that is gaining increasing attention around the world, especially in China where China Mobile is building out a huge system after doing tests with Clearwire in the United States.
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And hopefully Cook met with China Mobile and a deal is in the offing there as well.
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He holds China Mobile as a core in that portfolio, and likes the long term prospects of this teleco.
China Mobile uses a different 3G standard than the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, it appears Nokia's restricting the 720's availability to very select regions, with an concentration on the Asian market ( China Mobile is a confirmed carrier).
China Mobile is a member of my Validea Professional 10-stock Asia portfolio, which is up 15.8% this year while the MSCI EAFE index is in the red.
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Some experts think that the real reason is that China Mobile uses a home grown 3G network and there are technical difficulties in adopting iPhone for this network.
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