International carrier Vodafone has announced plans to sell the iPhone in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. As sales will only begin in early 2010, few details are available, though via the web interested buyers can sign up for more information as it becomes available. Specific release dates, phone prices and subscription costs should be released in the near future.
Japanese shoppers are already in line to buy the iPhone 3G S, which goes on sale with Softbank at 7AM local time on Friday, equivalent to 6PM Eastern on Thursday. Lines are smaller than those for the iPhone 3G launch, according to IDG, at present closer to 100 people at Softbank's flagship Omotesando store. When reservations opened for the 3G S last week, approximately 200 people arrived at the Omotesando location. Online preorders have not been allowed with Japanese iPhones.
Apple is looking to open a new store in Dublin, Ireland, says the Sunday Tribune. Apple is said to have hired property advisor Jones Land LaSalle to find a location, with urgency being linked to falling rent in Ireland, triggered by the current worldwide recession. The Tribune suggests that Apple is likely searching for a building with about 6,000 square feet split between two levels.
The activation process for the iPhone 3G should indeed be in two steps, O2 Ireland has confirmed. As part of its release information on the 3G, the company has mentioned that the first part of activation will involve the SIM card being activated in-store. To actually use the phone, however, people will then have to sync the phone with their computer's copy of iTunes, and run through a separate series of activation steps.
Vodafone India has already begun taking pre-registrations on the iPhone 3G, according to an announcement. The move is unusual in that the company has yet to disclose a final release date for the device, although rival Bharti Airtel is expected to release it on July 11th along with the initial wave of iPhone 3G deployments. Bharti has not formally announced any iPhone plans, including any registration campaigns.
Apple on Tuesday further expanded its international iTunes U offerings into four new countries: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. According to Macworld, the free resource provides students with access to a wide variety of educational rich media from colleges and universities around the world, including UC Berkeley, University of Melbourne, Texas A&M, MIT, Yale, and Trinity College Dublin, among many others.
The Irish version of the iPhone remains a good deal, despite its cost, insists the head of O2 Ireland. The device will be unusually expensive in Ireland, costing €399 ($605) for the 8GB version or €499 ($757) for the 16GB one; the latter costs the equivalent of €430 in the UK, or €370 ($499) in the US. Subscribing to the cheapest possible 18-month contract, an Irish iPhone user will have to pay a minimum of €1,209. This will still only net 1GB of data per month, and 175 minutes of talk-time, without any access to Visual Voicemail.
Coming only a day after exploration of Apple's iPhone 1.1.4 firmware revealed references to unsupported carriers, O2 Ireland has confirmed that it will soon be releasing the iPhone for its network. The debut is in fact scheduled to coincide with the beginning of the company's fourth financial quarter, with an official launch set for March 14th. This also marks the beginning of the St. Patrick's Day weekend.
Apple's latest iPhone firmware update points to Ireland as the next country to carry the device, according to a new report. Macity claims that in probing the firmware's latest list of supported carriers, references have been added for both T-Mobile Austria and O2 Ireland. No announcements have been made for Ireland, but T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhavan has himself confirmed the iPhone's arrival in Austria during the first half of 2008.
Journalist Adrian Weckler is predicting that an Irish iPhone will be seeing release this year, and that the country's 3G Stores will be the distributor for the device. Ireland's Sunday Business Post writes that 3G's CEO Tony Boyle is in talks with Apple to carry the device, after meeting with Steve Jobs at Macworld San Francisco. The chain – which has 23 store locations to its credit – reportedly has a long list of customer's waiting for the MacBook Air, while Boyle anticipates that these numbers may be indicative of interest in the iPhone.
