Tiny Luxembourg brings iPhone country count to 75
It’s not a big country — you could drop it on Rhode Island and have 546 square miles left over — but it still counts. So the news, reported Wednesday, that the iPhone 3G will be coming this fall to the 480,000 citizens of Luxembourg brings to 75 the number of nations with iPhone contracts.
Luxembourg, squeezed in between Belgium, France and Germany, is the last sovereign Grand Duchy in Europe, a constitutional monarchy headed by its own Grand Duke. It also boasts the world’s highest gross national product per capita, according to the CIA, and Europe’s highest mobile penetration. According to a report in the “Business & Technik” section of Wednesday’s Luxemburger Wort, the iPhone will be carried by VOXmobile, a subsidiary of France Telecom’s Orange.
Although Steve Jobs announced Monday that Apple (AAPL) had signed iPhone deals with carriers in 70 countries — a count, we’re happy to say, that agreed with ours — the dealmaking clearly continues. Earlier in the week, Apple added The Netherlands, Panama, Qatar and Venezuela to its iPhone roster. Still outstanding are the really big prizes: China and Russia.
For a (nearly) up-to-date list of countries and carriers, see AAPLinvestors here.
It seems highly unlikely to me that Luxembourg has the highest GNP. Maybe highest GNP per capita… ?
ex ped: Right you are. Fixed. Thanks.
It’s amazing… I think Companies are the new Sports Teams. People are cheering on Apple the way some people cheer on the Knicks or something.
Someone should organize a virtual “victory” parade for when iPhone sales passes the 10 million mark. Maybe everyone could gather in 2nd Life and jump around listening to avatars of Jobs and key engineers giving speeches etc.
What about Andorra, Monaco and Vatican City?
PED, it’s time to start making some responsible, and some wild, projections about iPhone sales during the first day/week/month of the release. Do we know which countries will debut the phone on July 11? Would like to compare to what we saw last June for 1.0.
Also, still holding on to my dream of iPhone in China before the Olympics. Too big an opportunity to pass up…the marketing guys on both sides are drooling over the possibilities. Gotta happen.
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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.
Maybe it will be carried by “VOXmobile, but maybe not.
Some rumors says that it will be the National Postal Service
(PT) who gets the iPhone 3G in August 08.