China Mobile is a huge market, and Apple wants to make sure that it keeps up with its users demands. However, the carrier still doesn’t have an iPhone on its network, though it has been wanting it for quite some time.
China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou says that the iPhone maker is working on supporting China Mobile’s TD-LTE network. Apparently, the carrier has been in talks with Apple for the past two years for an iPhone that would be compatible with its TD-SCDMA network, and so when it was brought up, news that a TD-LTE iPhone would be made soon.
According to MacNN:
“We hope that when they develop the next-generation models, since Apple can create CDMA, they can also consider developing TD-SCDMA,” says Wang. The iPhone is currently only carried in China by China Unicom, which relies on the GSM and HSPA standards supported by every iPhone except for the forthcoming Verizon model.
For now, we probably won’t see anything dramatic from Apple aside from the GSM models and the upcoming CDMA version for Verizon. However, several rumors surrounding the iPhone 5 say that it could be a dual GSM/CDMA phone. We’ll have to keep our reservations about that one until we see it for ourselves, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
When we asked Apple about 4G iPhones at the Verizon iPhone event, we received the same “no comment” answer on future products. However, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see any LTE Apple smartphones this year, so don’t hold your breath.
[Via: MacNN]