Apple's iPhone invades Austria and Ireland
The iPhone continued its march across Europe today.
Three months after it landed in Britain, German and France, Apple's (AAPL) mobile phone and computing device crossed into Austria and Ireland, where it will be carried by T-Mobile and O2, respectively.
It's all part of Apple's campaign to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008 by growing its international markets one region at a time.
The company now has its eyes on the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, according to a round-up of news reports assembled last week by Andy Space at 9-to-5 Mac. In Japan, Apple is reported to be talking to both DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile.
The biggest prize, of course, will be the emerging markets in the Far East. “We will one day enter China,” COO Tim Cook told Apple shareholders at the company's annual meeting on March 4. “We’re not saying when, and we will one day enter India.” (link)
Cook has said that Apple is not wedded to any particular model as it chooses carriers in the countries it occupies. Nor, it seems, are its partners married to any particular user agreement. Neither the Irish nor the Austrians get free data plans, for example, and although O2 provides Visual Voicemail and free Wi-Fi in the U.K., that's not something they're offering in Ireland. (link)
@awcabot Your ignorance is unbelievable. 9to5mac has been the source of every major Apple leak for the past year. This includes new iPod nano, iPod Touch, iMac Aluminum and MacBook Air.
the 5M iPhone was off by 20 and was due to internal Apple forecasts being off.
awcabot…macrumor linked to the t-mobile site, next time try reseaching for a few seconds before commenting.
I would be wary of relying at all on http://www.9to5mac.com, since they are a source of unsubstantiated rumor: they spread the word that Apple was going to announce 5M iPhones sold at MWSF, which was considerably off-mark.
They probably have no inside information at Apple and merely repeat what is written by other rumor sites or what seems to be reasonable. Of course the iPhone will spread in Europe; that is a no-brainer. When and who will be the carriers is important.
One might think that given the size+wealth of their populations, Italy and Japan are the biggest countries missing on the iPhone map, not China and certainly not India.
After all, they're called emerging markets because they are not quite there yet, and that's reflected in Tim Cook's statement: Apple wouldn't miss anything if the iPhone couldn't enter China and India in the next few years.