iPhone expands its empire, once again

Orange, France Telecom's mobile provider, will whisk the iPhone into at least 10 more European, Middle Eastern, and African countries.

The iPhone is becoming quite the world traveler.

The deal with Apple, announced Friday, will bring the popular device later this year into Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Portugal, Egypt, and Jordan, as well as into unspecified countries in Africa and--back on the home side of the Atlantic--the Dominican Republic.

Until recently the iPhone has been available in just a handful of countries outside the U.S., including the U.K., France, Germany, and Ireland.

But announcement after announcement of foreign outreach keep popping up. Since late April, the list of target countries has frenetically expanded to include Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Greece, Turkey, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

No doubt, that list is incomplete.

[Mr. Dee]

American Movil is MiPhone in Jamaica. MiPhone is currently expanding their 3G network, so it should be here just in time. I hope this puts some major pressure on Cable & Wireless and Digicel. Everybody here loved the Razor and I am sure the iPhone will get the same response. I have seen a few persons here running jail break iPhone and even then I wanted to get one.

[elllroy]

world domination, here we come. 50% of the us smartphone market by year's end (and 15 % of the world's smartphone market) and 1.5% of the overall handset market (17 million phones in 2008). my bet. (though it's a long way to go after nokia :-)

[kelmon]

Glad to see that Belgium is finally getting the phone. Now it just remains to see what sort of crazy price they want to charge for the thing since mobiles are damned expensive here already because subsidised phone are, apparently, banned to protect me (the consumer)...

[a1gevaldig]

Hebrew for Israel
PLEASE APPLE

[chonnom]

no mention of any of the big 2 cell-phone countries in Asia, South Korea or Japan...my Docomo phone is already better than an Iphone anyway.

[trs80]

Dominican Republic will have iphone via two carriers. Orange and Claro (America Movil)

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9086239