Apple will support LTE, says China Mobile chief

Davos, Switzerland: We finally have it on good authority Apple is developing an LTE iPhone, with China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou confirming the news at the Davos Economic Forum this week.

“Apple has made it clear they will support TD-LTE,” Wang said in Davos, Switzerland. “We hope that when they develop the next-generation models, since Apple can create CDMA, they can also consider developing TD-SCDMA,” he also said, confirming talks between Apple and the carrier to have been ongoing for the last two years.

We all recall the Verizon iPhone recently, when COO Tim Cook alleged that first-generation LTE chipsets demanded design changes in the iPhone which Apple couldn’t make. I guess this means we need to wait for v.2 LTE chipsets to reach market.

The iPhone is presently only available via China Unicom, which runs a GSM-type 3G network. Now the CDMA-savvy Verizon iPhone has been created, it can’t be long until it debuts in other CDMA markets, including China — it depends on how quickly Pegatron can churn them out.

China Mobile had 584 million mobile phone subscribers in December last year while China Unicom had 167.4 million.