By Carson Cheung, posted Jan 10, 2013 at 4:23 PM, 1,221 views,

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook Meets All Three Mobile Operators in China

Tim Cook has visited China Mobile’s headquarters today for his second China trip and met with the company’s chairman to discuss matters of cooperation. China Mobile is the country’s largest mobile operator but also the only operator that haven’t signed a deal with Apple. The CEO has also visited China Telecom and China Unicom, which the iPhone 5 is currently only available on these two networks in China. Cook had a nice dinner with the management of China Telecom last night, both sides have expressed great satisfaction and will have further cooperation in the future. The chairman even hope Apple could moderately supply more shipment to China Telecom than other operator …

China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers. So a deal with China Mobile could be give a significant boost to Apple’s market share in China. Apple has not been doing so well lately due to competition from local Android handset makers such as Lenovo, Huawei and Coolpad. Many domestic mobile phone producers have close cooperative ties with three of the country’s major telecom companies when it comes to sales through this distribution channel. Looks like Cook has made quite an effort to rope in China’s mobile operators in order to burst the iPhone’s market share in China.

Cook had also arranged an interview with tech journalists from several local web portal, which are mostly the authoritative IT media in China. This is properly the first time for Chinese journalists to interview the most powerful tech CEO on earth. Tim Cook told the reporters that he is confident China will become Apple’s largest market in the near future. Apple will definitely need China Mobile’s help if it wants to achieve that goal. Here are others few interesting point Cook had said:

“Currently, Apple has 11 stores in the Greater China region, as well as many resellers. We will continue to expand in China and the number of retail stores we’ll have will exceed 25 …”

“I have visited China at least 20 times, and I remember the first time was in 1996, when I haven’t been an Apple staff yet. These years, I have witnessed the tremendous changes in China. It’s a country that has huge energy. I have very deep feelings about Chinese culture, my sister-in-law is actually a Chinese …”

And one more thing, before having dinner with China Telecom last night, Tim Cook visited another Apple store in Bejing, this time is the iconic Sanlitun store. It seems Cook loves to inspect his company’s retail store and meet the customer. Of course, some Chinese customers were surprise to see Apple’s CEO appearing at the storefront.

SOURCE: SINA Weibo, ifeng.com, sina.com.cn (Chinese translated)