At the end of last week, it was announced that Apple Inc. and China Mobile Communications Corp., the largest mobile provider in China, are finally getting closer to closing an iPhone-distribution deal. However, no release date has been announced yet.

In April, China Mobile stated though that once they come up with a proper business model, Apple will be brought aboard for officially launching the device on the Chinese market. As there are hundreds of thousands of illegal iPhones currently being used in China, there is that very serious financial issue to be addressed as quickly as possible. It was estimated that at the end of 2007 there were around 400,000 cracked iPhones using China Mobile’s cellular network service. "The figure surprised us as it is fourfold of that we estimated before," Anty Zheng, Content Manager In-Stat China, wrote in a report dated February 15. Since then, the number of iPhones has most definitely increased.

In order to better understand the potential of China Mobile, one should know that the company has about 384 million customers, which is more than the entire population of the U.S.

In May, four major companies in the Asia-Pacific area announced that they would start distributing the iPhone. SingTel will bring the device in Singapore, Bharti Airtel Ltd. will take on India, Optus will cover Australia and Globe Telecom Inc. will sell the iPhone in the Philippines.

At the beginning of June, Softbank Corp. announced it would start selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Japan later on in 2008.