Interfax is reporting some of the details of Apple’s and China Mobile’s negotiations over the last 18-months. While wrangling for the rights to distribute the iPhone in China, China Mobile president Wang Jianzhou revealed that talks between the two companies have broken down three times over the past year and a half.

The three rounds of talks are also said to have involved Apple CEO Steve Jobs and COO Tim Cook, in the first round “Apple asked for between 20 percent and 30 percent of China Mobile’s revenues from iPhone users, which was rejected by China Mobile”.

During the second round of negotiations both Apple and China Mobile failed to agree on terms when Apple offered to “sell iPhones to China Mobile at $600 per unit and required that China Mobile subsidize iPhone service bundles offered to users.”

During the third and at the time of writing final round of talks “over Apple’s insistence that it, rather than China Mobile, sell iPhone applications directly to customers via its online store. Wang saw the offer as a threat to China Mobile’s dominance of China’s mobile Internet industry, as Apple rather than China Mobile would collect money directly from customers under the deal.”

“Wang said China Mobile should operate the application store itself in order to maintain its advantage,” Interfax reports.