On the eve of Macworld, when Steve Jobs will get up and do his regular magic show, a couple bits of news about the iPhone have bubbled up. First, China Mobile says it’s pulled out of discussions with Apple about launching the iPhone, with that pesky revenue share Apple wants assumed to be the sticking point. But a little darker is the news from the UK that Apple has “gagged” O2 and Carphone Warehouse from disclosing sales figures for the iPhone — leading to speculation that sales of the device have been disappointing.

It’s not too surprising that China Mobile wouldn’t want to give up any revenues to Apple, both because of corporate ego, but also because they’ve been pretty successful at driving data spending on their own. If they don’t believe the iPhone will deliver significant additional revenues, the deal doesn’t make a lot of sense — especially when you consider that the iPhone can’t be used to buy standard ringtones, wallpapers, Java games and other sorts of content that deliver revenues, either directly or through a revenue-share with content providers, to China Mobile.

Some people seem a little more surprised by what appears to be a lack of demand for the iPhone in the UK. But the UK is a market where there are plenty of advanced, 3G devices (Nokia N95, Windows Mobile touchscreen devices, and others) available at a much lower cost — so the iPhone looks very pricey, but also doesn’t look nearly as revolutionary as perhaps it does to consumers in the US.

El Jobso was probably able to just flutter his eyelashes at US operators and have them competing over who would give Apple the biggest revenue share, but it’s unlikely things will play out the same way in other countries. The iPhone needs to drive enough incremental revenue gains for operators to justify the revenue-share deals, and for many, that will be a difficult equation when flat-rate data plans and lost content sales are factored in — especially when other devices can deliver those gains without demanding a cut.