Tim Cook visits China again hoping to entice local carriers with upcoming iPhones

January File Photo

According to a local Chinese report, Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently back in China hoping to jumpstart relations with Chinese carriers this week. Cook met with China Telecom, already a strong Apple partner. The topic of conversation wasn’t revealed but likely on the plate is Apple’s lower cost plastic iPhone, perhaps called the iPhone 5C, and overall flattening growth in Apple’s second biggest market.

Apple CEO Tim Cook in China, visited with China Telecom, possibly to talk about declining iPhone sales, say local reports.

— Michael Kan (@Michael_Kan) July 30, 2013

The article speculates that he probably met with the other local carriers including partner China Unicom and the world’s biggest carrier, China Mobile who has around 700M subscribers – none of which have direct access to Apple’s iPhone yet.

It is Cook’s third known trip to China since he took over as CEO almost two years ago. Other things that may come up include Pegatron’s supposed worker violation issues and perhaps even another Beijing scalping problem.

Rough translation below:

It is speculated that with the previous high-level meetings with China Telecom Cook similar, the two sides level will mainly focus on the issues discussed at the strategic level, may also be involved in co-generation iPhone and sales.

Insiders pointed out that China and the Cook high-level talks with China Telecom, may mean that the new generation iPhone will likely be listed in China through China Telecom first sale.

It is understood that since Apple CEO Cook served as third visit to China since it is unclear the specific time of Cook’s visit and travel arrangements, Cook is expected to be in the next few days, respectively, in China Unicom and China Mobile executives meeting. Early January 2013 and mid-March 2012, Apple CEO Cook to the identity of the first visit to China, one after another with the Ministry of Industry executives and China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom’s top leaders met.

Since Cook served as Apple CEO, Apple’s emphasis on the Chinese market gradually improved. At present, through China Unicom and China Telecom, Apple covers China’s 350 million users.