Two pieces of great news for my country, the Philippines! One is, I’m back, and the other more important one is that Engadget reports that Globe Telecom is releasing the iPhone in the Philippines!
Well, apparently not all credit goes to Globe. According to Engadget’s EIC Ryan Block, it’s actually Singapore Telecommunications which secured the rights, and is releasing it through it’s partly-owned subsidiary Globe.
According to Engadget:
Singapore Telecommunications (aka SingTel) announced that it’s secured agreements to distribute the iPhone in Singapore (on SingTel Mobile) and its partly-owned subsidiaries in Australia (on Optus), India (on Bharti Group), and the Philippines (on Globe Telecom). Vodafone’s also distributing the iPhone in India and Australia though, so we’ll have to wait until later this year to find out who gets to shoot first.”
No news as to when though, nor any other details yet, but knowing it’ll actually happen is the important thing. I’m hoping it’ll be announced at the WWDC next month.
(Thanks to Jason for the heads-up!)
UPDATE: Globe Telecom has made the announcement (tersely though; Engadget had more to say) on its website. Question now is, what’s longtime rival Smart going to do? I don’t think they’ll take this sitting down.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
finally! Good job Globe!
May 13th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
that’s really an exciting news. i got an iphone recently from singapore but the wi-fi is not working in our broadband system onboard our vessel. i hope this will solve the small probs when i’ll be back home soon!
May 13th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
A local telco eventually snagging the iPhone is a no-brainer — either Globe or Smart will eventually get it. The bigger question is this: Does this also mean that the iTune Store will also be available locally?
Remember that a connection to the iTunes store is needed to activate the iPhone. If this is so, how long before we get to actually purchase music, movies and TV shows from iTunes?
May 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
oi great timing! globe just gave me a free sim…. heheheh…
but my iPhone is jailbroken anyway
May 13th, 2008 at 8:48 am
wow! thanks for the great news!