China Mobile, the world's largest mobile phone carrier, announced today (Dec. 18) that it is still continuing talks with Apple to sell iPhones.

The anticipated deal between the two companies in China, the American company's second-largest market after its home turf, has been expected for a couple of years now.

A deal with China Mobile could be worth billions of dollars in revenue for Apple. As many as 759 million potential new China Mobile customers could gain access to iPhones, generating up to $3 billion in extra revenue in 2014, which is equivalent to nearly a quarter of Apple's projected revenue growth in its current fiscal year.

Xi Guohua, the chairman of China Mobile, said that his company had no announcement to make on any deal to carry Apple's smartphones. Xi was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Guangzhou, a southern city of China.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that an announcement was coming "around December 18," and Xi's comment on Wednesday apparently meant that the deal has now been delayed, which was reported by the local news media and later confirmed by a company spokesman, Ge Qi.

Xi also told the conference that China Mobile aims to sell 190 million to 220 million handsets next year. He said the company planned to step up subsidies to cover the cost of handset sales from the 27 billion renminbi, or $4.5 billion, it spent in 2013, according to the company's official account of his remarks on the Sina Weibo microblogging service.