One of the first questions about the worldwide iPhone release was where are China and Russia? Everyone noticed they were not included neither in the first 22 countries nor in the other 48 to get the iPhone this year. Then we learned that both Russian and Chinese carriers are in talks with Apple for releasing the 3G iPhone.

China Mobile spokeswoman Rainie Lei said:

Apple is no longer insisting on a revenue-sharing policy, so the biggest hurdle for China Mobile to bring in the iPhone has been cleared, but there are practical issues still to be resolved.

In other words Apple won’t ask China Mobile to pay a percentage off their iPhone future subscription plan. Which means that China Mobile will go ahead and subsidize the iPhone like any other normal carrier.

I guess the practical issues are still quite big since there’s no official release date or expected price. So we’re getting closer to a Chinese iPhone but not quite. Moving on people, there’s nothing to see here!