By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 01:00 PM EST

Apple is chatting with China's largest mobile carrier about a deal to bring iPhone to the country sometime next year. Meanwhile, Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen will step down at the end of this month. And Apple during the month of October was treated to some welcomed news out of Japan.

iPhone for China

China Mobile, China's largest cell-phone carrier, is in talks with Apple about bringing the iPhone to China, but no agreement has been reached yet, the telecom's chief executive said Tuesday.

The companies still need to iron out their differences over revenue sharing, Wang Jianzhou told reporters on the sidelines of the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in the Chinese territory of Macau.

Apple has said it plans to launch iPhone in Asia in 2008 and is in talks with various operators in the region.

Chizen steps down

Adobe said Monday that its Board of Directors has appointed current president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen as its president and chief executive officer, effective December 1, 2007. Narayen will also join Adobe’s Board of Directors at that time.

Narayen replaces Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen, who will serve the remainder of his term on Adobe’s Board of Directors through the Spring of 2008 and continue in a strategic advisory capacity through the end of fiscal year 2008.

“Bruce Chizen’s vision has helped transform Adobe from a company that was known mainly for its popular design products into one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world,” said Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, Adobe’s chairmen of the Board of Directors, in the press release. “We thank him for his outstanding leadership and contributions to Adobe’s success during his entire 14 years at Adobe and the past seven as CEO.”

Sales of Mac OS X surge in Japan

Microsoft's has taken a bruising in the Japanese marketplace just as Apple's Mac OS X Leopard was released, according to a new report by the country's Business Computer News translated by Electronista.

It notes that while sales of Mac OS X increased dramatically between September and October, climbing from a rate of 15.5 percent year-over-year to 60.5 percent, Microsoft suffered from the reverse effect. Sales growth of Windows plummeted from 75.3 percent to 28.7 percent. The sudden switch provided Apple with about 53.9 percent of the total OS-only marketshare in Japan during October -- a breakthrough for the company, BCN says.

Although the results are expected to cool in the wake of Leopard's release, the report notes that the sharp increase is more than 10 points stronger than the growth in Mac OS X sales triggered by the release of Tiger in April 2005.

Japan has frequently been cited as one of the most difficult markets to breach in the world today, with a rapid decline in overall computer sales forcing Hitachi out of the market entirely and numerous other PC vendors turning to alternate computer designs such as Sharp's Internet AQUOS.