Another false start for the arrival of the iPhone to China

On your marks! Get set! Whoooa.. So close yet so far. The eager beavers at Reuters got us all excited earlier today reporting that China Unicom had finally inked the deal to bring the iPhone to China. They went so far as to report that the device would cost Unicom RMB3,000 per phone, a price they will hopefully pass on to the consumer which would make it RMB1,000 cheaper than the smuggled US models sold at Metro City.

Just as we were about to head to our nearest Unicom store to queue up, reports started trickling in, first as an update on Engadget then from a full Reuters article on the Yahoo site that progress had been made but... well you can guess the rest.

We're still hoping though that the pricing information is correct and that nobody is hurt in the dissemination of the information.