Apple has been given the green light to sell the iPhone in South Korea by the Korean Communications Commission. However, Apple is said to be still in talks with two of South Korea’s carriers: KT and SK Telecom. No launch date has been set yet.
China Mobile’s chairman said that his company is still negotiating with Apple to become the second iPhone carrier in China. Three months ago, rival carrier China Unicom bagged the deal to sell the iPhone in the country and began selling the smartphone on October 30. News of China Mobile’s negotiations with Apple surfaced 2007 but no agreement has been reached probably because of the carrier’s objection to Apple’s revenue sharing model as well as the issue of China Mobile already having its own app store.
Speaking of the App Store, even though Chinese consumers’ reaction to the iPhone has been considered lukewarm, the App Store is reportedly doing very well. It’s estimated that over $1 million in sales have been made since its launch, this in spite of the fact that the iPhone sold in China doesn’t have Wi-Fi, most of the apps in the App Store are described in English, and customers are required to have a credit card issued by a Chinese bank, which is said to a rarity among consumers in China.
Old news
About two weeks ago, Apple added StarHub as its third carrier for the iPhone in Singapore and will enter the iPhone arena with M1 and SingTel by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Vodafone signed a deal with Apple to become its official partner in Qatar, making Vodafone the first carrier for the iPhone in the Middle East. Japanese carrier Softbank said they added 97,500 new subscribers in October, beating rivals eAccess’ 80,000 and NTT DoCoMo’s 55,100. Softbank attributes this growth to the popularity of the iPhone. Last but not the least, Orange became UK’s second iPhone carrier and the company has claimed they received around 250,000 pre-subscriptions for the iPhone. As a consequence, O2, the once exclusive iPhone carrier in the UK, has announced that they will allow their customers to unlock their iPhones as long as they carry out the terms of their contract.
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