Appletell

The iPhone is finally rapidly expanding into more worldwide markets. Vodafone has just made an announcement stating that it has signed a contract with Apple, and will start selling iPhones in 10 new countries: Australia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. No specific date has been given, but expect the phone to be out later this year.

The fact that Apple has chosen Vodafone for all 10 of these countries speeds up the process of deploying the iPhone. It means Apple doesn’t have to deal with 10 different carriers for each country, as they have previously. Apple chose AT&T in the US, O2 in the UK, Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany. It’s good to see Apple meeting their goals with bringing the iPhone to the rest of the world, especially where it has huge demand. This should also prevent iPhones being exported from the US, and being hacked to work on local networks.

Via [Engadget]

Apple can do a better job at selling iPhones in Europe, says Apple’s genearl manager of European operations: Pascal Cagni. In a conversation with a French newspaper, Les Echos, Cagni said that Apple intends to expand its distribution of the iPhone to more European countries - however, he did not mention the names of the countries. He also reinstated Apple’s determination of selling ten million iPhones this year. Apple has currently sold just under 5.5 million iPhones since the launch in the USA.

The countries expected to receive the iPhone next are the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy - not to mention the other countries in Europe who are awaiting the iPhone’s launch. It is most likely that these countries will have their launch around the time of the new 3G iPhone, therefore skipping the first generation iPhone.

Cagni also mentioned that Apple’s French users will soon get TV show downloads through the iTunes Store in France in the coming months. Apple introduced this same service in Germany earlier this month.

Via [Macworld UK]