According to China Mobile Ltd, Steve Jobs himself has expressed interest in developing an iPhone utilizing the Chinese carrier’s network standard, TD-LTE.

What is TD-LTE? LTE, which stands for Long-Term Evolution, is a primary technology behind 4G, which stands for really fast mobile internet connections. It’s the new hotness, and offers twice the speed that 3G connections do. The TD in TD-LTE stands for Time Division LTE, and has been developed by China Mobile over the past three years. 

Why would Apple be interested in supporting TD-LTE as opposed to any of the other variants of the technology? Well, for one thing, China Mobile has the largest mobile phone subscriber-base in the world, so supporting TD-LTE buys them an awful lot of compatibility. TD-LTE also looks like a pretty cool piece of tech, according to gomonews.com:

• They run on different bands of the wireless spectrum. But the part of the spectrum that would carry the TD-LTE signal is much cheaper, and has much less traffic.
• TD-LTE and LTE are so similar that the same chip can access both networks – which is much easier for handset manufacturers.
• I mentioned the upload and download speeds of LTE above. On LTE networks, it carries two separate signals, one for data traveling in each direction. In TD-LTE, there is single channel, and it allocates upload or download bandwidth depending on what you’re doing.
• The other standard for 4G, WiMAX, is not particularly compatible with LTE. There’s talk that it WILL be compatible in the future, but it’s not at the moment. TD-LTE, however, can be pretty cheaply and easily upgraded to from WiMAX

With good tech, and access to a huge chunk of subscribers, Supporting TD-LTE would seem like a pretty smart move for Apple.

Via Reuters