Details on iPhones in Latin America
All indications point to a large, international distribution of the iPhone that's just waiting for to launch. Earlier in the week, Vodafone announced their intention to carry the iPhone in ten countries, and The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Vodafone, Telstra and Optus will carry the iPhone in Australia.Today, Reuters is reporting that America Movil will carry the iPhone across Latin America. They're in 16 Latin American countries, plus the Caribbean and the United States. As of March 2008, America Movil held more than 159 million mobile subscribers.
Of course, they were tight-lipped about the details of the arrangement, like exclusivity or plan specifics. We'll see soon enough.
Thanks, Rodrigo!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gerdozain said 2:58PM on 5-08-2008
I can officially say, by information provided from within Paraguay, that Claro, whose parent company is America Movil, will be the official iPhone distributor in Paraguay.
Now, seeing that Claro is the brand by which America Movil goes in all other countries such as Argentina (my home country), Brazil, etc … we should probably expect them to be distributing the iPhone on all 16 latin american countries.
As to the date, no confirmation yet.
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Gilbert Palau said 3:06PM on 5-08-2008
Sadly this doesn't apply to Puerto Rico. Although Claro (who aquired the services of Verizon in PR recently) is present in the island. Whatever Apple does with Latin America, it never includes Puerto Rico. I wonder what type of country or parallel plane Steve Jobs considers Puerto Rico under. They dont treat us as the commonwealth we are, they dont include us as a state, and we are obviously not in their plans that include Latin America. This is why there are no Apple Stores in Puerto Rico.
Nevertheless Puerto Rico holds record sales during the year specially in christmas season.
Apple should seriously reconsider what the hell they are going to do about us in the future regarding their services, because a lot of Puerto Ricans that live in the island have to go through hurdles to buy Apple products or receive support. We can't buy directly from the Apple Store, Apple Care is not valid in the island (although they sell it through CompUSA and BestBuy).
So just wanted to clarify that in case anyone from the island is reading this.
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Rafael Borges said 6:06PM on 5-08-2008
Here in Brazil all newspapers are announcing Claro (America Movil) as the official iPhone distributor. But there's one more thing... ;)
According to Brazilian laws, operators must provide unlocked cell phones (like in Germany, I think...). Now, considering the fact that this unlocked ones are more expansive and considering that Claro sucks, I see no decrease in the number of "imported" iPhones...
And I still think that this Apple's LA strategy is only to dump old iPhones... :/
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David Alfaro said 6:06PM on 5-08-2008
I can say it will be an exclusive for América Móvil. Those guys have a Monopoly. TAs in México they have 80% of all users, and the service is not cheap, and they have had TONS of other mobiles exclusives.
May be that is why the owner of America Movil is the 2nd Richest man of the world.
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angelo said 9:03PM on 5-08-2008
Too bad that Claro is the number 1 cellphone company in Chile...in user's complains and contact endings... at least for Chile, this is a very very bad move...
of course America Movil has 150million clients over latinamerica...anyways
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Fernando said 7:01AM on 5-09-2008
I'm not sure it will be Claro, i've also heard about Vivo working on the Brazilian iPhone. Either way, Brazil and Chile should be a must have in those 16 countries since Brazil is #1 market in cellphone users in south america, followed by Chile.
But there is one thing, smartphone adoption in south america is ridiculous compared to other countries in Europe/North America. Unless Apple can make a competitive price, that's not a very promissing market...
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