“Globe Telecom and Apple Bring iPhone 3G to Philippines

MANILA and SAN FRANCISCO—June 9, 2008—Globe Telecom and Apple® today announced that they will be bringing the highly anticipated iPhone™ 3G to the Philippines later this year. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

‘We are very excited to be working with Apple to bring Filipino consumers iPhone 3G later this year,’ said Gerardo C. Ablaza, Jr. president and CEO of Globe Telecom. ‘Our customers are our greatest passion and we’re constantly striving to offer them the most innovative products such as the revolutionary iPhone 3G.’

‘We are thrilled to bring iPhone 3G to millions of mobile customers in the Philippines,’ said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. ‘We can’t wait to get this revolutionary mobile device in the hands of even more people around the world.’

iPhone 3G will be available to Globe’s postpaid and prepaid subscribers in the Philippines later this year.

*Based on 3G and EDGE testing. Actual speeds vary by site conditions.

Globe Telecom is a leading telecommunications company in the Philippines with more than 21 million mobile subscribers. As a pioneer, Globe Telecom continues to be a part of the revolution that’s connecting millions of people across the Philippines and around the world. Beyond technology, Globe Telecom’s business is truly shaped by the bonds that tie Filipinos together. Communications is ultimately about relationships, and this drives the company to innovate and constantly find easy and relevant ways to enrich people’s lives.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.”

Sourced from Apple. Note the “postpaid and prepaid” part.

Non-Filipino readers might find this post’s title odd, but it’s just Taglish for “I’m mobile”, which for this blogger is a clumsy play on the rumored new name for Apple’s .Mac service (and for the purposes of this blog will be referred to as DotMac, to retain the sanity of my word processor’s autocorrect feature.) It’s also a play on the current and more-than-annoying marketing campaign of local telecom provider Smart Communications called “Me na Me” presently irritating us silly here in Manila for their Smart Buddy service.

Ok. So there I go ruining the whole structure of the post just so I could have my silly title. Let’s just have it out then: According to rumors, Apple seems to be set on renaming their DotMac service, that US$99 one-year thing where you get a paltry amount of online storage and a snotty email address that ends in “mac.com” (and some other stuff), to Mobile Me. Ugh.

Dunno about you, but the fact that you can get everything DotMac is offering for free elsewhere online seems to me a testament to the lengths fanboys will go to for their mothership. (Full disclosure: I used to be suckered into this thing too, and had a DotMac account for three years or so until I wised up and saved my money instead to buy more useful things like food. And beer.) But apparently it may be time to come back to the fold.

According to many archived reports, Apple trademarked the name Mobile Mac on Jan. 5, 2006, and while much was made of it at the time as Apple folk are wont to do, nothing happened and people forgot about it. Now though, people poking through the code of the recently released 10.5.3 update of Leopard have come across considerable evidence that Apple is finally going to use the two-year-old name, presumably after the relaunching announcement to be made at Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote on June 9.

A rose by any other name, blah blah. What’s more important is what new stuff it will offer for the hundred bucks (or however much they’ll be charging for it), and right now all we can do is make educated guesses. Obviously it will tie in with the new 3G iPhone and include stuff like push email, wireless syncing and things Blackberry fans have been enjoying for years. We’ll just have to add Mobile Me to our list of things to wait for during the keynote. If it had really useful features, I wouldn’t be averse to signing back up again and resurrecting my old DotMac address.

Which also means most of us renegade iPhone users will have to formally sign up with Globe Telecom when it finally releases the phone for my country (sometime in September, if rumors are to be believed). Obviously my non-3G first-gen kracked-and-jailbroken iPhone won’t do, so I’ll have to pony up for the new one. Life is hard. Ah, well.

(By the way, is it just me, or does Mobile Me really sound like an embarrasingly jejune name for an Apple service? It even sounds …Microsoftian, like something Gates and Ballmer might’ve thought up. Sheesh.)

[Box art mock-up via TUAW]

So far, Apple’s mobile version of the Safari browser has only been seen on the iPhone screen. Previously it’s been ported for Windows on the desktop, but outside of Macs and iPhones, that’s the only non-Apple screen it’s been on. Until now, that is.

The new Samsung L870, a slider S60 smartphone running on Symbian 9.3 that was announced for the European market in April, will be available there beginning August. Its features were revealed today: it’s a tri-band GSM phone with a 3 megapixel camera, and comes with some apps, including a PIM homescreen plug-in and a business-card recognition function, but by far its most interesting and unique feature is that it’ll run Apple’s Safari browser on its 2.4″ QVGA display.

Seems like a solid phone. We don’t know yet how Safari’ll look or fare on a small screen (amazingly, it’ll be a full browser as opposed to a hobbled version), but we’re willing to bet it’ll be better than the S60 web browser. No word yet from either Samsung or Apple as to how this odd pairing came about, but maybe we’ll hear something at the WWDC.

Apple seems to be softening up on its one-provider-fits-all policy for the iPhone in other parts of the world.

Recent announcements reveal that yes, it is now possible to have different providers sell the iPhone in the same markets, particularly in Europe. For example, Deutsche Telecom has had the exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in Austria, but now Orange is getting in on the action there as well. In Italy, Vodafone and Telecom Italia are now both distributing the iPhone, while in Egypt and Portugal, Vodafone and Orange both have their fingers in the Apple pie.

In the US, the five-year exclusivity contract between Apple and AT&T apparently still stands, but T-Mobile USA has recently started providing wifi service in Starbucks cafes alongside AT&T. Hmm.

In the Doodler’s home country, it was recently announced that Globe, one of the two dominant telecom providers along with Smart, will be releasing the iPhone in the Philippines this year through its partnership with Singapore Telecommunications, which has acquired the rights from Apple for the region.

So it isn’t impossible to see a Smart iPhone in the future as well, after all.

Well, as we say here in my country, the more, the many-er.

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.