China Mobile wants stripped-down version of iPhone
After several months of negotiations, it looks like the iPhone is finally coming to China – albeit with some functionality removed. It appears that China Mobile, the exclusive iPhone carrier for the region, is asking Apple for a version of the device with the Wi-Fi and 3G chips disabled, leaving customers with nothing but a slow 2G data connection.
The reasoning behind this odd petition is that state-owned China Mobile plans to build and push its own 3G network using the Chinese TD-SCDMA format, which is not compatible with the widely used W-CDMA standard. By disabling the 3G functionality, it would make the iPhone less appealing to users that might want to buy it and unlock it to work on the W-CDMA network that rival China Telecom manages.
