Report: iPhone headed for joint launch in Japan and Korea
With less than three weeks to go before Steve Jobs’ June 9 keynote address, Apple may be close to a deal that would add two of Asia’s hottest cellphone carriers to its growing list of international partners.
The Telecoms Korea news service reported late last week that Apple (AAPL) is planning a special joint release of the next-generation iPhone with two carriers whose names are synonymous with 3G: Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Korea Telecom Freetel. (link, paid subscription).
NTT DoCoMo (DCM), with more than 50 million subscribers, is Japan’s predominant mobile phone carrier. It pioneered so-called third-generation cell phone technology with the 2001 launch of FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access), the world’s first W-CDMA 3G service.
KTF, in which NTT owns a minority stake, adopted DoCoMo’s 3G technology in 2004. It has 12 million subscribers in South Korea and operations in several other Asian countries, including India, Indonesia and China.
For a U.S. firm to bring advanced mobile technology to Japan and Korea has a coals-to-Newcastle feel. These are two of the most cell-phone savvy countries in the world, where features like multimedia messaging and “wave to pay” services are standard fare.
If Apple can conclude the deal before June 9, that would leave China as the last big Asian market without an authorized iPhone carrier.
Source: AppleInsider.
people are already selling iphones in India ….and people are on line to buy it. check it out……
http://birlaa.com/2007/10/12/buy-apple-iphone-in-india/#comment-9184
Good news for APPL. I do not understand Apples lack of iPhone penetration in China and India. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile company with over 380 million customers. We all know China (and India) is the largest mostly untapped market in the world. I’ve been to China and you see Nokia and Motorola stores, so I don’t understand what is taking Steve Jobs so long to get in. China has a bunch of jail-broken iPhones, or cheaper iPhone copies. Apple must get deep into India and China, that is potentially 100-200+ millions phones sold. Just be sure to offer similar benefits phones in those countries currently have.
ex ped: Apple has already indicated it will have a presence in India through Vodafone (see here).
They don’t have a carrier in China yet, but it’s not for want of trying.
It is true that India is a big market, with a population of over 1 billion, but only a small fraction of that large population can afford an iPhone. When you look at it that way, the Japanese and Korean markets have much greater potential. The same argument can be applied to China as well. I would be more interested in seeing the iPhone being offered in Taiwan (Republic of China, population 20+ million) and Hong Kong (though it is technically a special region of China) first, which will have much higher adoption and penetration rate than the mainland.
Being a 10 year DoCoMo subscriber in Japan; I can testify that there is absolutely no problem with customer service for cellphones in Japan. If Apple iPhone will be sold exclusively by DoCoMo customer support will most likely be handled through the DoCoMo stores like other makes of phones they handle. If DoCoMo lands the iPhone deal, it will most likely help them recover some of the loss to other carriers through the liberation of the Japanese cellphone market (portable numbers). I for one support the iPhone to be handled by DoCoMo in Japan. I would order one immediately (and ditch my current Motorola) ;-)
I don’t understand why people forget big iphone market in India…. There is a big potential for iphone sales out there…Bollywood industry is hugh and now a days they have every thing what we have here. Indians love to copy westurn culture.They will see one Bollywood star with an iphone and it’s in business…..
So, we add 62 million to the potential world-wide market for the 3G iPhone, and by my count we’re up to 700 million now.
Currently the iPhone has approximately a 3% penetration into the overall cellphone market place. Assuming the 3% stays level, that’s 21 million iPhones this year!
Sounds to me like the 3% level is a conservative figure, as iPhone penetration will likely grow when the 3G and new SDK are in the mix.
Man, how big is that WWDC in June gonna be?
-zach
http://www.zachbass.com
iPhone announced in India too… Its the worlds second largest wireless market… I don’t understand y u people don’t take India into account..
Read about iPhone India plans here http://www.birlaa.com
I had heard that customer service for cellphones sucks in Japan. If Apple could bring users better customer service, that might make all the difference in the world for them to move to the iPhone.
There won’t be much that the 3G iPhone will be lacking compared to some of Japan’s cellphones except possibly live TV and the ability to purchase things from vending machines.
SwissCom had been talking about live TV for the 3G iPhone, but I hadn’t heard any details. I sure hadn’t heard of the new iPhone having a tuner, but maybe there are other ways to stream to the iPhone.
iPhone going to DoCoMo will be surprising news - largely because of the latter’s inflexibility and ‘walled garden’ philosophy which an internet enabled device will challenge. The Apple brand has extremely high value here & the iPhone will be hugely successful as long as Apple have added the necessary extras the Japanese have come to expect from their 3G network (including a user-facing camera for video chat) and they have forced DoCoMo into offering a reasonably priced ‘all you can eat’ data plan.
i thought Korea was exclusively a CDMA market…does this portend a CDMA compatible iphone in the US that would work on Verizon or Sprint?
ex ped: The Infineon chipset Apple is rumored to be using supports both HSDPA and WCDMA. See specs here.
Continued market penetration as with the other signings. No guarantee of sales though. Mature 3G markets will make it harder for Apple. The Iphone is not a dissimilar product as it was in the US. These and the European markets will be the first time Apple faces products that offer similar fare. The only thing the Iphone might have is the “touch” screen. Will be most interesting
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
Asia are already buying US I-phone and sold them in the markets here.