China Mobile: Love the iPhone, hate paying for it

ComputerWorld has probably the most extensive article I've seen describing China Mobile's CEO's interest in offering Apple's iPhone, based upon a speech he is giving in Macao:

"Our customers like this kind of fashionable product," Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile's CEO, on the sidelines of the GSM Association's Mobile Asia Congress in Macau.

But in a speech at the conference, Wang said he doesn't like some of the new business models emerging in the mobile phone industry, including handset makers wanting to share revenue with mobile operators.

"We still think we can maintain the operator-centric model because we have the customers, the end users," Wang said.

And with 350 million subscribers, one has to expect that China Mobile's views will carry some weight. All that said, I don't expect Steve Jobs and Apple to cave either, since they didn't give in to similar objections from Verizon in the US. And after all, there's always China Unicom to talk to.

Technorati Tags: Apple, China Mobile, China Unicom, iPhone, Mobile phones, Wang Jianzhou