Italians say 3G iPhone Soon, No Exclusivity
We’ve taken a pass on much of the 3G iPhone rumors floating around lately because, well, enough is enough. The latest one is of particular interest however. La Repubblica, a well-respected Italian newspaper, is reporting that the 3G iPhone is most certainly on its way to Italian carrier Telecom Italia. What’s more, it’s coming soon. Ummm great, tell us something we don’t know. Here’s where it gets interesting: According to the Italian paper, Telecom Italia will be seeing the 3G iPhone arrive without long-term exclusivity and without a revenue sharing agreement. Is Apple slipping? Doubtful. Perhaps Jobs just learned that there’s more money to be made by dealing with more partners as opposed to issuing the phone on a single carrier with the delusion that your device is so amazing, customers will be breaking contracts left and right to get their hands on it. It also could mean that the US and ROW release of Apple’s sophomore handset will be much closer together than the first time around, although we all probably had that feeling. Here in the US however, is doesn’t mean much since we can safely assume AT&T will be the only carrier sporting Apple handsets for a while to come.
maybe Rogers in Canada will now finally get it as well
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OMG OMG!!!!!!!! almost 1st post!!!!!!! omg!!!!!!!
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AT&T sucks dictionary. Damn it Apple, why only AT&T?!?!?
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I’m torn between this phone and the SE Xperia.
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they should make a cdma 3g iPhone! so verizon AND at&t can have it and el jobso will make more bank
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This isn’t as mysterious as some people think it is.
In some countries (like the US) there are several strong cellular carriers and a product which would induce a customer to drop your competitor and sign with your company is worth its weight in gold. AT&T stated it received nearly a half-million NEW customers due to the iPhone alone in Q3 of 2007. There is no reason to assume now that the model with AT&T changes with any new Apple deal in Italy.
In other countries (like Italy), there is one company with a tremendous advantage in market share. While Apple would want to pair with the cellular provider with the largest network, most robust service and most potential customers for the iPhone, the leader doesn’t have any incentive to share revenue with Apple, since that company is already #1 and doesn’t require Apple’s products to stay there.
Now that Apple has signed all the low-hanging fruit with revenue-sharing agreements, it will sign deals with the rest on a pure exclusivity basis, or (as with Italy) allowing a single company to sell unlocked phones to be used on competitor’s systems.
This serves to further extend Apple’s market share in smartphone globally.
The big frontier, of course, is China. China Mobile has supposedly had talks with Apple, but couldn’t have been any less motivated to revenue-share when it already has something like 67% of the nearly 600M cellular customers in China. CM is the largest company in China, so for Apple to partner with CM would extend its reach throughout the emerging Chinese market (even with all those gray-market iPhones being used at this moment).
The question is whether Apple is able to make a splash entrance to the Chinese cellular market before the Beijing Olympics begin in early August. Most likely that won’t happen, as everyone in China is pretty busy at the moment. But it might well happen before the end of 2008, and *conservative* estimates of China’s value to iPhone sales range from $600M to $6B.
The Italian deal, then–assuming everything reported is correct–most likely represents the relationships Apple will have with the remaining cellular carriers elsewhere in the world.
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@Miro,
Are you seriously considering comparing this to a SE XPERIA? I’m sorry but that XPERIA is the new shit in mobile technology, right now it’s the TyTN-II but the moment that becomes available everybody’s going to be wanting it. There’s just no way to compare an XPERIA to an iPhone. Comparing them is a crime and truth there’s not much on the iPhone to compare to an XPERIA. Anyways aside from my rant, GET A SONYERICSSON XPERIA X1.
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lol 3G iphone… to little to late.. i just posted this with evdo rev a which is faster than most dsl connections.. how could you go guys go so far back in time to edge data.. the i phone has a great screen and a great browser the rest of the phone is more limited than a sidekick two which is so sad…
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