Will the iPhone ever officially make it to China? It’s beginning to look like it may never happen.

The wrangling between Apple and China Mobile, the country’s dominant network operator, to launch the iPhone in the world’s largest mobile market has been long reported. Now, we’re getting a little more detail as to what the sticking points are between the two companies. One word: control.

According to Interfax, which cites a source at the China Mobile Research Institute quoting the carrier’s president Wang Jianzhou, the 18-month old negotiations, which included Apple CEO Steve Jobs and COO Tim Cook, broke down three times.

In the latest and third round of talks, the two haggled over which company would sell iPhone applications directly to customers. As it does everywhere else, Apple wanted to sell directly to consumers through its App Store. China Mobile chiefs, however, balked at this. Wang apparently considered the notion of Apple interacting and directly collecting payment from Chinese consumers as a “threat” to the operator’s dominance over the country’s mobile internet market.

China Mobile has a 72 percent share of the market, or 634 million subscribers as of the end of November. In September last year, it reported it had 100 million registered users signed up to its instant messaging service, 80 million to its music service, and 40 million to its newspaper service.

It appears neither will back down for now, so the talks remain a stalemale, one that may not be broken until Jobs returns from his sick leave in June.