Good news and bad news for the Middle Kingdom: China Unicom will likely be selling an iPhone sooner than expected, but it will be one that does not have Wi-Fi functionality.

The Chinese government, which controls the nation's three major cellular carriers, said in the past that it objected to Wi-Fi in phones (perhaps because it's harder to sniff local packets than ones drifting through a wide-area network). According to reports, China Unicom has a deal to sell a GSM-based iPhone, like the ones sold elsewhere, but the license is for something where Wi-Fi is blocked. As TradingMarkets.com puts it: "Apple has to cancel the Wi-Fi function without changing other components."