No China Mobile Deal and the New MacBook Release Top the Apple Headlines Thursday

The market was up almost 300 points Wednesday, yet Apple AAPL was down about three-quarters of a percent. The explanation lies in one of the two big Apple stories from Wednesday.

Wednesday was supposed to be the day of the big announcement.

Apple and China Mobile were supposed to let the world know that the two companies had come to an agreement and the iPhone would finally be available to the more than 700 million China Mobile customers.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile, said that the company had no announcement to make concerning a potential Apple deal and that talks were continuing.

Related: The Apple – China Mobile Deal By the Numbers

The news could have been worse. Investors saw it as a positive sign that talks were continuing rather than announcement that the deal was dead. Investors believe that a significant portion of the recent move higher came from speculation that the China Mobile deal was imminent.

Apple was down as much as three percent on the news intraday but staged a strong rebound to close fractionally lower.

Mr. Xi, speaking at a conference, said that China Mobile hopes to sell 190 million to 220 million phones next year. The company plans to subsidize the purchase price. This is good news for Apple since its phones are too expensive for a large portion of the China Mobile’s customer base.

Mac users have waited for the new model since Apple talked about it early in the year. 

In other news, speculation that the new Mac Pro would begin selling this week was confirmed late Wednesday night when Apple began taking online orders.

According to Apple’s website, select models will ship by December 30 based on an order date of late Wednesday night. More advanced models show a ship date of February 5, according to AppleInsider.

The baseline configuration starts at $2,999 while the more advanced model starts at $3,999. One screenshot shows a configuration costing $6,669.

Inventory levels of the machine are still unknown although CEO Tim Cook indicated that production of the new desktop was ramped up in Austin, Texas where it’s being made.