They've already inked a deal with China Mobile and their 100 million cellphone subscribers.
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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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Apple has been negotiating with China Mobile to make iPhone its flagship phone.
One of the key factors to continued iPhone share increases will be the company striking a deal with China Mobile.
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Nokia this morning announced plans to launch to Lumia 920T, a Windows Phone 8 device, with China Mobile.
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Apple had been negotiating with China Mobile to make iPhone its flagship phone to fuel further iPhone growth in China.
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The analyst who ran the study, Katy Huberty, thinks the deal with China Mobile could happen in the second half of 2013.
Penetrating China could however mean margin pressures as the company negotiates carrier subsidies with China Mobile and competes with the increasingly popular Android phones.
There were pictures, and reports that Cook was handling the negotiations with China Mobile when it came to bringing the iPhone legally to China.
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Apple's device isn't compatible with China Mobile's existing network, but both the device and the carrier are moving toward the next generation LTE standard, says Morgan Stanley.
Taking advantage of this, China Unicom has been closing the 3G gap with China Mobile by adding at least an equal number of 3G subscribers every month.
It has conducted joint tests in Arizona with China Mobile.
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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.
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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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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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.
Citi analyst Glen Yeung had earlier warned that the company risked losing up to 50% of its growing market-share in China and put its proposed deal with China mobile at risk by not responding adequately to complaints.
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.
That could make Google attractive in Asia and other fast-growing markets, with China Mobile (nyse: CHL - news - people ) and Orange Telecom--which has a large presence in the developing world--likely to become Google partners.
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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When I first heard about Shenzhen-based Tencent during the early 2000s from ICQ managers, Tencent was working with China Mobile to allow PC users to send short messages from PCs to phones, and then via SMS (mobile Short Messaging Service) back again.
Several times, deals were nearly announced with Apple by China Mobile, but seemingly at the last moment, the deal fell through and Apple walked away.
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China Mobile, with close to 700 million mobile subscribers, controls almost 65% of the Chinese wireless market.
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Low 3G penetration of about 15% in China is giving smaller wireless carriers such as China Telecom ample opportunity to compete on an even ground with the otherwise dominant China Mobile.
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Low 3G penetration of around 18% in China is giving smaller wireless carriers such as China Unicom ample opportunity to compete on an even ground with the otherwise dominant China Mobile.
As consumption of mobile data and video escalates in China, our small lightRadio Metro Radios will satisfy demand with the highest performance that China Mobile's customers' have come to expect.
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And with a 2-year contract, China Mobile offers the Lumia 920T with only 1 yuan!
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Carriers, with the exception of China Mobile, are now adding more number of 3G subscribers than 2G.
The surge has attracted the attention of Apple chief executive Tim Cook, who met with the chairman of China Mobile last week.
But that comes with heavy baggage: The content provider must pay fees to China Mobile and share its revenues with the company.
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