China Mobile Ltd.'s (CHL) biggest plan for this year is to list in mainland China, but the specific timing of a listing depends on regulators who are forming a plan for the country's so-called "red chip" companies to return to the mainland market, China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou said Friday.

Red chips are companies that have most of their assets in mainland China, but are registered and listed overseas--typically in Hong Kong. China doesn't allow companies registered overseas to list their shares on the mainland's exchanges at present, though the government has said it plans to change this.

The remarks come as red-chip companies, like China Mobile and Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688.HK), have said they're considering mainland listings.

China Mobile could list via A-shares, Chinese Depositary Receipts or on an international board, Wang said on the sidelines of government meetings in Beijing. It plans to list the whole company, not through a special purpose vehicle, the chairman has said previously .

Wang also said Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs is interested in fourth-generation LTE mobile technology and is willing to develop an iPhone using it.

Apple didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

There has been no new progress in China Mobile's talks with Apple, Wang said. The company has said for years it is talking with Apple about offering the U.S. company's popular iPhone smartphones in China. China Mobile is competing with other Chinese mobile operators including China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (CHU), the country's second-biggest operator, to offer attractive smart phones on the Chinese market.

China Unicom's Chief Executive Chang Xiaobing said Friday on the sidelines of the same meetings that his company hopes to speed up its introduction of Apple's (AAPL) iPad tablet computers in China but has no specific time-table.

Apple already sells the iPad in China, but only versions without third-generation mobile connectivity, and China Unicom doesn't yet offer the devices. Unicom, the sole telecom carrier to offer the iPhone in mainland China, said last year it hopes to offer the iPad as soon as possible.

China Unicom is experimenting with fourth-generation mobile technology, Chang said, but didn't elaborate. Telecom operators worldwide are deploying or preparing to deploy 4G networks to offer faster data services and higher revenue per user than services using older technology.

So far, China Mobile is the only Chinese carrier to have announced tests of 4G technology. The company said in December it would start large-scale testing of TD-LTE technology, the variation of LTE that China Mobile is promoting.

The large-scale tests are now about to start, Wang said on Friday.

-By Owen Fletcher, Lily Sun and Eliot Gao, Dow Jones Newswires; 8610 8400 7702; owen.fletcher@dowjones.com
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