its same regulatory issues when apple wanted to launch in france
and germany.
if i am not mistaken, they managed to get it approved in germany to
avoid the anti competitiveness measure.
however, in france, they are required to offer an unlocked version
for purchase. so what did they do? they priced it significantly
upwards. if i rem the earlier pricing decisions, they set it at
EUR400 for locked and EUR1000 for an unlocked version.
they can probably do a similar thing in singapore.
from previous news, it seems only M1 is seriously interested in
bidding for the iPhone agreement.
honestly, in terms of launch, singapore is of quite low priority.
have to go through approval from TAS on locked phones and market
not exactly attractive. to my understanding, china is at the top of
the list, with japan and korea next with CDMA versions.
it only makes sense. why would they want to launch in smaller
markets? they rather focus on the larger markets and work their way
down to the smaller ones.
US > Europe (UK, France, Germany) > China > Japan
also, vodaphone apparently has an agreement to carry iPhones in
countries they operate in, so NZ and Aus is indirectly benefiting
from this. intended launch is 3rd/4th qtr 2008 i think.
so singapore, can wait 2009 and beyond.
