Apple abroad: T-Mobile iPhone in UK; Mexican iTunes Music Store
According to The Register, T-Mobile U.K. has authorized only 150 phones per week to be issued to certain customers. The phones, which are last year's model, are officially supported by T-Mobile, although the move is not sanctioned by Apple, which has an exclusive agreement with competing carrier O2.
"T-Mobile has imported an unknown number of iPhone 3G handsets from a European distributor," the report states, "which it will be supplying to customers paying more than £75 a month if they threaten to leave — the latter clause enforced by allocating the handsets through 50 agents in the retentions department, and limiting those agents to three a week each."
T-Mobile is not advertising the offering, though, because they do not want to risk upsetting Apple. The carrier has an exclusive contract for the iPhone in the company's home country of Germany.
Last month, rumors surfaced that the iPhone 3G could be coming to the British T-Mobile after that model's exclusivity expires with carrier O2. The iPhone 3GS, however, would remain solely on the O2 network.
iTunes Music Store opens in Mexico; Online store in Brazil coming soon
Apple officially launched the iTunes Music Store in Mexico Tuesday. The destination has a selection of both Mexican and international artists from all major labels and "hundreds of independent labels."
"Launching with a catalog of millions of songs, the iTunes Store in Mexico features Mexican artists including Paulina Rubio, Vicente Fernandez and Zoe and a wide range of international artists including Shakira, Lady Gaga, Green Day and thousands more," Apple stated in a press release. "With most songs priced at 12 pesos and most albums at 120 pesos, the iTunes Store in Mexico is the best way for Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online."
Though the store includes music and videos, there are currently no TV shows or movies available, according to an AppleInsider reader.
Songs sell for 12 pesos, while albums range from 90 pesos to 170 pesos. Music videos are 24 pesos. At 12 pesos, songs cost about 91 U.S. cents.
"The iTunes Store in Mexico is off to a great start with music from all of the majors and hundreds of indie labels," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet Services. "And the revolutionary App Store in Mexico gets bigger and better with great new apps using amazing new features, and we can't wait to see what developers come up with next."
Another AppleInsider reader sends word that Apple's online store in Brazil is almost ready to open. According to MacMagazine, manually typing in certain addresses makes sections of the Apple Store available in Portuguese.
Some sources have reported that the regional store could open this month.
17 Comments
Here in Switzerland :-(
Apple needs to allow the sale of unlocked phones world wide at the full premium price. No reason to keep hi spending subscribers from getting what they want... especially if they or the carrier are paying top dollar. I imagine that there are a lot of folks in places like China and other parts of Asia, Latin America, Europe, etc who want a phone with no restrictions especially when they travel... and want to use local numbers. Plus they want to use features like WiFi, etc without restrictions or even tethering.
Even better would be if the customer could order the phones over the Internet and then BYO plan or SIM card.
I've been waiting so long for this.
Thank you so much!
Apple needs to allow the sale of unlocked phones world wide at the full premium price.
it will likely happen at some point but for now they need to recover their R&D and regional testing monies and these contracts do that.
as for the thing in the UK. Tacky, very very tacky. I'm sure T-Mobile is going to take a hit from Apple if this turns out to be true and I have to say they deserve it.
I've also been waiting for this, noticed this by accident at 1 AM when I was about to download an App... :P
I know there are still no movies available for download... but my question is, once (or if) they put movies for download, will we get the option of downloading them in English and/or Spanish? Or does it download both in the same file and I just select the audio kinda like the subtitles?
I ask this cause I like to watch movies in the original language, translations can really break a movie, or in case of animated movies, sometimes they're better (IMO, like Shrek, a lot more funny in Spanish), so it'd be nice to have the option...