U.S.-based Apple said while publishing its latest financial report that it hopes the iPhone products could enter the Chinese market in 2010, which most likely means the iPhone will not be officially available in China this year.

In its financial report for the second quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, starting from December 28, 2008, and ending on March 27, 2009, Apple said it sold 3.793 million iPhone handsets, realizing sales of USD1.521 billion. Though its handset sales decreased by 13%, its revenue increased by 22%.

For when Apple's 3G iPhone will be introduced into the Chinese market, the attitude of China Unicom, an expected cooperator of Apple to jointly launch the 3G iPhone in China, has been puzzling Chinese consumers, but Apple has disclosed some information on this issue and said it hopes to introduce the 3G iPhone into the Chinese market in 2010 and the company is working hard to achieve this goal.

Apple's iPhones are already unofficially sold in China through grey market sellers, though the 3G features that bind the phones to various online services are not operable on those unlocked iPhones when used in China.