It is in China that most iPhones distributed around the world are manufactured, but Apple product launches are often slow to arrive there. The iPhone 4S, for example, which was launched in October last year, only arrived in the country seven months later.
This time, Vice President of China Unicom, Li Gang, told the Sohu IT (Google Translate) that the operator has already entered into an agreement with Apple and that, if the long process of Chinese government approval does not delay, it will launch the iPhone 5 in the country by the end of the year.
The confirmation comes shortly after the operator announced that it would launch the iPhone 5 before the end of the year, as it extended the agreement originally signed with Apple in 2009.
China Mobile, the largest operator in the world, is also trying to close a deal with the Cupertino giant, which is taking too long to happen. The biggest obstacle is that, according to the current technical specifications of the iPhone 5, telecom's 3G and 4G LTE networks are not compatible with the new iGadget.
(via TNW)
