iPhone times two in Australia and India - where next?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Monday, 12 May 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! Australia and India will now get the iPhone from SingTel and Vodafone, just like Italy is getting the iPhone from Vodafone and Telecom Italia, showing a serious break from Apple’s previous stance of only one telco per country. Is Steve Jobs finally listening to his customers? With the announcement that SingTel will also be a distributor of the iPhone, the iPhone distribution net has just widened dramatically – with more countries and operators surely yet to come. SingTel is the owner of SingTel Mobile in Singapore, the owner of Optus in Australia, and an investor in Bharti Airtel in India and Globe Telecom in the Philippines, and will distribute the iPhone in all four countries, bringing great joy – and in two cases, more choice – to anyone in those countries that has wanted to purchase an iPhone legitimately. Now that Australia, India and Italy officially have more than one iPhone providing telecommunications company, it seems certain that not only will even more countries soon get an announcement that the iPhone will be officially available, but that more telcos in those countries will compete to sell the iPhone to the masses. What this means, aside from consumers being able to choose the carrier they want, rather than being forced to choose a particular carrier, is that consumers will hopefully be able choose from competitive voice and data plans in their own countries. The money for carriers comes not from the sale of the iPhone, but from the monthly tally of voice calls and data usage, but the carrier that is the most generous will see iPhone users flocking to their service, especially when it comes to data, something the iPhone loves to chew through, whether it is the existing 2G model or the heavily expected 3G model due in just a few weeks. Now that screenshots of an iPhone screen showing 3G able to be enabled or disabled have appeared on the Internet, the issue of a 3G iPhone seems settled – as long as the image is real, which it very much seems to be. After all, it would be unbelievable if there wasn’t a 3G iPhone, with the enable switch letting users choose when and if they want to use 3G. Why is this important? Please read onto page 2. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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