• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 11, 2009

China has long loomed as a huge potential opportunity for outside mobile technology companies. Cracking that market has been another matter. But recent reports suggest that Apple will launch the iPhone soon in China, while Dell may debut its own mobile device there.

Of the two, Apple's initiative to roll out the iPhone in China appears to be more solid. Senior Apple officials were to visit China last week to finalize negotiations with wireless operator China Unicom and government officials to sell the iPhone there, according to a Fortune report.

That followed a Reuters report in late July that Apple had reached a preliminary three-year deal with China Unicom, one of the country's biggest carriers, to sell the iPhone in China.

Details of that agreement reported by Shanghai Security News would call for China Unicom to buy the devices from Apple for 3,000 yuan (about $440) each, and to guarantee annual sales of 1 to 2 million units and at least 5 billion yuan ($732 million) in annual revenue.

For their part, Apple executives said during the company's third-quarter conference call that the China negotiations continued to be a top priority, and that Apple plans to begin selling the iPhone there within the next year. Other reports online suggest it could be as soon as September, and that Apple may partner with Best Buy in China for retail distribution.

The other rumor emerging this week, via TechCrunch, is that Dell is planning to launch an "iPhone-like" mobile device in China imminently. Its sister site Mobile Crunch has followed up with a report that Dell is partnering with China Mobile to release an Android-powered phone called "Ophone mini3i." Dell has declined to comment on the report.

What's not in question is that China has a lot of mobile users -- more than 700 million, according to second-quarter figures from mobile research and consulting firm Chetan Sharma. As of last year, Nokia was the top mobile phone seller in China, with a 46% share of shipments into China.

Due to the sheer size of the mobile market in China, eMarketer predicts the Asia-Pacific region will overtake the U.S. in mobile ad spending by 2012 when it hits $6.8 billion.