The rumors that the iPhone 5 may have LTE are starting to gain momentum, but is still not likely this year. China Mobile said that they would support this to their 600 million or so customers, but this will still not happen until at least 2012. Both Apple and the carrier have been in talks since the first-generation was released back in 2007, so great to see the two could be close to a deal.
Apple will have to make a few changes to the China Mobile version of their 4G iPhone, as they use a technology called LTE TDD, which some of you may know means Time-Division Duplex. PCWorld learned this from a spokesperson from the carrier, who had been in direct contact with chairman Wang Jianzhou.
Some of you may be wondering why Apple and China Mobile have not made such a deal in the past, and the simple answer is all down to TD-SCDMA 3G network. The 3G technology is very different to what AT&T uses, so would have required Apple to rebuild their smartphone to accommodate this.
China Unicom already has the iPhone, so has the jump on their rivals. They currently offer the handset to their 174 million customers, so this latest news will not only be a boost for China Mobile but also Apple as well, as the number of iPhone sales could likely see a huge percentage increase.
There had been rumors that an LTE iPhone would be with us this year, but that is highly unlikely for a number of reasons, the main one being that the technology used by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon is still in its infancy.
