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China Mobile said Friday the main obstacle keeping iPhone out of the world's largest mobile phone market had been cleared now that Apple has dropped its revenue-sharing demands.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said this week he would like to see the device introduced in China later this year, and a senior China mobile executive confirmed the two companies were back in talks.
"We've broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level," Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile's general department, told AFP.
Gao said Apple had given up previous demands, including a requirement to share revenues.
But he would not give a timetable for the iPhone hitting the China market, which had 540 million mobile users at the end of November 2007.
Some market analysts expect it could happen in November.
Apple unveiled earlier this month its latest version, the iPhone 3G, which is designed for faster Internet downloads and longer talk times, and provides GPS mapping built in.
The company will begin rolling out new versions of the sleek smartphone devices July 11 and make it available in 70 countries, starting at a price as low as 199 dollars, half the cost of its predecessor.
-- AFP
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