Apple’s Cook touring China, allegedly to talk iPhone 5 with carriers

Though Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs never visited China, the new CEO Tim Cook has been spotted at the company’s Apple Store in Joy City, a shopping mall located in Xidan, Beijing. A local news article included pictures of Cook posing with fans, snapped at the store. However, the real purpose of the executives’s visit to China is shrouded in secrecy. Remember, Cook also visited China last year and was photographed at China Mobile’s headquarters in Beijing. China Mobile, the nation’s largest wireless operator and the world’s largest carrier with more than 600 million subscribers, does not yet carry Apple’s handset. Nonetheless, they are already hosting some 15 million iPhones on their network, up from 10 million back in October. Is Cook in China to cut that long-expected iPhone deal with China Mobile? It’s interesting Cook chose not to visit the more prominent Sanitun store. The Joy City store, which opened for business in 2010 when Apple launched the iPhone 4 in China, has since become Apple’s top retail spot in terms of consumer traffic and transaction volume. It’s clear Cook would not take a flight to Beijing just to visit a high-grossing local store. According to the report by TechNode: There’re speculations that Tim came here to talk to China Unicom and China Telecom about introducing the company’s next generation of iPhone – iPhone 5 (or the new iPhone, who knows), according to people familiar with the matter. China Unicom and China Telecom are the only two carriers currently offering Apple’s handset in the 1.33 billion people market. Apple is now activating more iPhones in Chinathan in the United States or any other market for that matter. The company is said to appeal to the local market by China’s leading search engine Baidu as the default searhc choice for Chinese customers in iOS.

Apple’s CEO found time to pose for a nice shot with a fan. Last week, iDownloadBlog discovered code strings in iOS 5.1 strongly suggesting that a sixth-generation iPhone will feature fast 4G LTE networking and possibly FaceTime video calling over 4G. The new iPad is the first mobile device to feature 4G LTE networking, courtesy of a Qualcomm MDM9600 3G/4G wireless baseband chip paired with a Qualcomm RTR8600 multi-band/mode RF transceiver for LTE bands. Apple could pursue the same combo with the iPhone 5 or opt for Qualcomm’s smaller, next-gen Gobi modem chips. Whichever the case, the inclusion of the fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution radio technology in the next iPhone seems to be a forgone conclusion at this point. If the new iPad is anything to go by, 4G LTE and other improvements might pose a problem in terms of heat dissipation and battery life, both expected to be more pronounced on the iPhone where space is at a premium. Are we in for another Heatgate with iPhone 5? Chime in with your thoughts down in the comments.