China Mobile says it is not close to carrying the Apple iPhone 5

The Apple iPhone 5 is not on the world's largest mobile network

So why isn't the Apple iPhone 5 available for customers of the largest carrier in the world? Yue Li, the president of China Mobile says that business issues are keeping the Apple iPhone from being offered to China Mobile customers. Li says that Apple and China Mobile have been in talks since 2009 and came close in 2011 to working out a deal. As we've mentioned, the Apple iPhone in its current form, will not work on the carrier's proprietary TD-SCDMA 3G network. The carrier is said to be working on a network that the Apple iPhone will connect to, but is probably not ready to withstand the heavy demand from Apple iPhone 5 users.

China Unicom, a rival carrier, announced that it had received 100,000 orders for the the Apple iPhone 5 on the first weekend that it became available. Pre-orders have been taken for China Telecom with 5,000 units ordered on the first day they were taken. Last week, it was announced that shipments of the Apple iPhone 5 would go out to China starting on December 14th.

Li says he looks forward to working out a deal with Apple. An agreement with China Mobile should quickly double the number of Apple's installed base of iPhone units in the country,