Yes, China is huge, so any market entry here would have been big, but the most interesting thing about this deal, to me, is the starkly different revenue model for Apple:
"Under the three-year deal, iPhones will start to be sold in China in the fourth quarter of this year. Unicom will not share revenue with Apple, as some operators do, and it will purchase the handsets from Apple on a wholesale basis and resell them to consumers, the Chinese company said. Unicom Chairman and Chief Executive Chang Xiaobing said at a news briefing that it will offer a subsidy to customers to lower the iPhone's price, but he didn't elaborate on how much the subsidy would be. An Apple spokesman confirmed the Unicom deal, but declined to give further details."
China Unicom Strikes iPhone Deal - WSJ.com
In other words, Apple's selling into China Unicom as a channel, and recognizing the revenue like a retail sale, not as a subscription. China Unicom is taking the inventory risk in exchange for keeping all of the service revenue over the life of their iPhone users' subscriptions.
It makes sense, of course, as Apple can do heavy lifting in the US for AT&T that it can't do in China. In the US, Apple can giftwrap subscribers for AT&T through Apple Stores and Apple.com. That's a cost of acquisition that AT&T doesn't have to carry, but one that Unicom does.
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