Yesterday we got Vodafone (and Telecom Italia, don’t forget Telecom Italia!) announcing that they’d be bringing the iPhone to ten countries later this year. Today, it’s América Móvil, the largest mobile operator in Latin America, dropping their own iPhone news (PDF link) by announcing that it’s signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to “its Latin American operations.”
The Mexico-based provider, which serves 17 countries and has 159 million subscribers, did not elect to give specifics about which countries would be included in the deal, or whether or not it was an exclusive arrangement. Besides Mexico (and the United States), América Móvil does business in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay.
It looks like 2008 is shaping up to be a very international year for the iPhone, and that estimate of 10 million is looking more and more conservative to me as these announcements keep cropping up.
[via Macworld]
According to Brazilian law, cell phones cannot be blocked by operators. This will be very interesting, because if they sell the unlocked version in a higher price range (as in Germany), iPhone's price here in Brazil will be very expensive (I guess about US$2000 considering German's price tag).