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It looks as though Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) might finally be able to crack the Chinese market with its iPhone. The rumor mill at one time had the company in talks with China Mobile, the country's leading carrier, but those negotiations apparently fell through over questions of money.
Also, Apple is rumored to be finally creating a new, CDMA version of its iPhone that could topple AT&T's (NYSE: T) exclusive carrier position in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the iPhone seems to be catching on in the enterprise, another wide-open market for the device.
Finally we now know why Apple is raking in the shekels: its profit margins on its new iPod shuffle look to be simply huge.
Apple in China at Last?
Apple has been trying to crack the China market for quite some time, and no wonder -- there are more than 300 million mobile phone subscribers in the country. However, talks with China Mobile, one of the major players there, have reportedly gone nowhere.
It's believed China Mobile could not accept Apple's terms on revenue sharing. Also, at about US$500, an iPhone is a pretty expensive piece of hardware in a country where the typical annual income in urban areas was just over $7,900 in 2005, according to the China Statistical Yearbook. In rural areas, it was about $500 less.
Perhaps China Mobile didn't have to accept Apple's terms -- it claimed at the end of 2007 that 400,000 of its subscribers were running cracked iPhones on its network.
Well, Apple may now be in talks with ChinaUnicom, according to Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe. "The current thinking is the China Unicom deal 
will probably be announced in May," Howe told MacNewsWorld.
China Unicom is the world's third-largest mobile phone operator.
Hello CDMA, Goodbye AT&T Exclusivity?
There are also reports that Apple is developing an EVDO version of the iPhone. EVDO stands for Evolution-Data Optimized -- it's a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access.
EVDO has been standardized as part of the CDMA2000 family of standards, and has been adopted by many mobile phone services providers around the world, particularly those with CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) networks.
That would tie right in with Apple's supposed plans to crack the China market. "There's a huge amount of EVDO phones in China, so EVDO iPhones would be big in that market," Howe said.
EVDO iPhones might also find their way into the U.S. market. If they do, they could break AT&T's exclusive arrangement with the iPhone stateside, Howe predicted.
It could also be why Apple is expected to use Broadcom's (Nasdaq: BRCM) BCM4329 combination chip, which has FM, Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities, in its next-generation iPhone.
The Enterprise iPhone Cometh
For a while now, some iPhone users have had to sneak their devices onto corporate networks through the back door if they wanted to use them at work. Often, senior executives who have personal iPhones insist on using them on the job and ask IT workers to figure out ways to connect them to the corporate network.
That has been a growing trend, and Forrester Research -- which had dismissed the possibility of the iPhone becoming an enterprise tool back in 2007 because it lacked enterprise-capable features -- now says the device is enterprise-ready.
Kraft Foods, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and Amylin Pharmaceutical all use the iPhone as an enterprise tool, according to a report by Forrester analyst Ted Schadler.
Maybe those three companies are happy, but some enterprise IT admins may be nervous about having the iPhone on premise. "Every Fortune 250, if not Fortune 500, company is trying to find ways of keeping the iPhone out of the enterprise," Ozzie Diaz, CEO of wireless intrusion prevention vendor AirPatrol, told MacNewsWorld.
The iPhone and the Mac are indicative of the consumerization of the enterprise, where consumers bring their tools and technology to work and use them, thus causing problems for enterprise IT, Diaz said. In his former role as the chief technology officer at HP's (NYSE: HPQ) Office of Strategy and Technology, with responsibilities across the company for mobile and wireless technologies, he wrestled with this issue for two years.
"The No. 1 issue for enterprises is security," Diaz said. "They don't care whether you use an iPhone or [another] 3G device, their problem is that these are being rapidly adopted in the organization and that IT can't catch up and close the security holes they create."
Profits Galore From the iPod Shuffle
Just over a month ago, Apple introduced its newest iPod shuffle. This is nearly half the size of its predecessor, measuring 1.8 inches tall by 0.3 inches wide.
It has 4GB of storage and a VoiceOver feature which lets it speak out your song titles, artists and playlists in 14 languages.
All of this is cool, but what's a lot cooler from Apple's perspective is that it's really, really cheap to make the newest iPod shuffle, according to research firm iSuppli. The iPod shuffle is "little more than a chunk of memory with a single-chip media player attached to it," said iSuppli's Andrew Rassweiler.
The latest version has 171 distinct parts, compared to its predecessor's 213. Most of the parts are inexpensive. iSuppli figures the third-generation iPod shuffle costs $21.77 to make, including manufacturing and battery costs -- three cents less than its predecessor.
That makes the iPod shuffle, which retails at $79, one of Apple's most profitable products when you calculate cost of manufacture against selling price, according to Rassweiler.
MP3 and personal media player sales are expected to fall because of the recession, iSuppli said. However, it expects the new iPod shuffle's added features and low price to help maintain Apple's dominant position in the global market for MP3 and personal media players.
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