At the last moment of foraying into China, Apple faces a dilemma to choose a partner for the promotion of its iPhone. The new choice is China Unicom, which has started negotiations with Apple over the introduction of iPhone into the country.

If China Unicom gets the license to sell the 3G iPhone in China, the business will greatly help the company's promotion of WCDMA products. China Unicom is the country's sole WCDMA carrier.

China Unicom's negotiations with Apple started as early as October 2008, but policy restrictions and different business models became barriers to reaching an agreement.

Since the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has not allowed the sales of Wi-Fi mobile phones in China, Apple needs to shut down the Wi-Fi function of iPhone or wait until the policy restriction is canceled in order to distribute the phones.

Both sides are also in disagreement in terms of embedded software for the iPhone. Apple inserts iTunes APP Store and YouTube in the multimedia smart phone, while China Unicom hopes that software that caters to the habits of Chinese customers will be installed.

It is believed that China Unicom will face pressures from making profits since Apple asks for sharing from call tolls generated by iPhones sold in the country, making it difficult for the companies to enter into a terms of use agreement.