14 DAY TRIAL // T-Mobile Austria announced it will launch Apple's iPhone in the Central European country, starting with the first half of 2008. There is no exact date regarding the launch, but everything is official, since Hamid Akhavan, T-Mobile's Chief Executive Officer, confirmed the release. This being said, Austrian consumers that want Apple's little wonder will not have much to wait until they can get it. Of course, if someone wants the famous phone really bad, it can already be bought, but only on the black market, which isn't really the best option.
T-Mobile Austria has a subscriber base of about 2 million users, which may not seem a lot for markets like the UK or the US. However, T-Mobile is a leading mobile operator in Austria, as the landlocked country only has a 8.3 million population (almost all of the Austrians owning a cell phone).
Currently, T-Mobile has exclusivity over the iPhone in Germany, where the handset was released last year, but its sales, although not bad, didn't meet the carrier's expectations. We can't say how successful the iPhone will be in Mozart and Haydn's country, but this depends first of all on T-Mobile Austria's offer and pricing. Most probably, the carrier will offer only the latest version of the handset, the 16GB one, released about a week ago. Even so, it is hard to believe that there will be big sales figures, as in the US, where many mobile users are crazy about the iPhone.
Apple's notorious handset is already available in several other European countries, including UK (via O2), France (from Orange) and Portugal, and the Cupertino-based company plans to make it available soon in more countries like Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium. Moreover, future releases for Australia and Japan are schemed, to spread the iPhone craze around the world.