China Telecom on Tuesday said that it will start selling iPhone 4S in China from March 9. iPhone 4S will be available at RMB 0 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models on select contracts in China Telecom’s authorized stores and online at www.189.cn.

Online reservations will be available beginning Friday, March 2.

China Mobile has been in talks with Apple to sell the iPhone in China, but the problem was that it uses a home-grown proprietary 3G technology called TD-SCDMA that is not compatible with Apple. It is, however, trialling its 4G TD-LTE network, with a commercial launch expected late this year or early in 2013, which will serve as a precursor to a deal with Apple.

"We are really happy to offer the amazing new iPhone 4S," said Mr. Yang Xiaowei, executive vice president of China Telecom. "We believe iPhone 4S on China Telecom’s advanced 3G network will create great excitement among our customers."

Apple’s market share in China has witnessed a decline recently lagging behind Chinese telco major ZTE.  China has more than 1 billion mobile users, according to the latest data.

iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system; and iCloud, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that work with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.