June 9 launch date for the iPhone 2
A June 9 launch date for the iPhone 2? No surprises there, and now it looks like inside sources are confirming the June 9 date, which is also when Steve Jobs’ keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is scheduled.
But Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz has got wind of the details of the launch, and his source tells him that the Second Coming will be a worldwide event — not just in the United States. He also claims that his snitch, “someone very, very close to the 3-G iPhone launch”, says that the current fixed pricing model will be discontinued in favor of a more Euro-friendly flexible price point, one that can shift subject to the markets and the whims of the telcos.
The last point concerns Spain. As we reported this morning, Telefónica will indeed carry the iPhone, and will be launching it along with its brand new Madrid megastore on June 18.
This seems plausible enough. Despite the odd delay, all of Apple’s hardware ships worldwide immediately upon launch. And the evidence coming in from around the world corroborates Jesus’ story: The million and one one-line press releases from cellphone carriers announcing deals with Apple, for one, and the iPhone drought in the UK, Germany and even the online Apple store, for another. What is amazing is that Apple kept things quiet for so long, considering the amount of people involved.
So far, we count over 40 countries with iPhone deals, and in some of these there will be multiple carriers offering the iPhone. Here’s what I believe to be a comprehensive list, not including the countries where the iPhone is already on sale, in no particular order (actually, the order I found them on Google):
Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, Italy, India, Austria, Philippines, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Canada, Singapore, Belgium, Jordan, Romania, Switzerland and Slovakia.
Fortune has a fancy infographic coloring the iPhone territories in red:
British readers might note an eerie similarity to the old map of the British Empire, with the controlled territories colored pink.
If Jesus’ tipoff is right, it looks like Apple is poised to conquer the world with the iPhone, much as it has done with the iPod, only a lot quicker. Piper Jaffray consultant Gene Munster put the numbers into his calculator and totted up the potential market for the iPhone now that these deals are in place. The number is 575 million. If Apple does nothing more than keep its existing 3 percent market penetration, that means it could sell 17.25 million iPhones. Muster doesn’t stop there, though. He reckons that Apple could shift 45 million units by the end of 2009. Truly, the iPhone could be the phone on which the sun never sets. Source
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