The word is, even though China Unicom placed up product images of the Apple iPhone along with several other smartphones last week, China Unicom is still in negotiations with Apple over the iPhone.

China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing has stated the negotiations with Apple are ongoing and there is still some way o go to get a deal finalised.

According to Barron’s, there are still 2 hurdles to jump, fist the Chinese law banning WiFi enabled mobile handsets, and secondly China Unicom wanting to install their own software on the Apple iPhone which will apparently include a non-iTunes media player.