Four Asia-Pacific mobile providers - Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., Bharti Airtel Ltd., Globe Telecom Inc. and SingTel subsidiary Optus Monday - said Monday they have signed an agreement with Apple Inc. to offer the iPhone in their respective markets later this year.
SingTel will sell the multimedia gadget in Singapore, Bharti Airtel Ltd. in India, Globe Telecom Inc. in the Philippines and Optus in Australia, the companies said in a brief joint statement, without giving details.
SingTel owns Optus and holds a 30.5 percent stake in Bharti and 44.5 percent in Globe. As of Dec. 31, 2007, SingTel had about 2.3 million mobile subscribers in Singapore and around 7 million in Australia. Bharti currently has about 64 million subscribers, while Globe reported a 21.3 million mobile subscriber base for the quarter ended March 31.
The announcement comes as Apple looks to expand sales of the iPhone - a combination phone, music player and Web browser - that was launched in the U.S. in 2007.
On Wednesday, America Movil, the top mobile phone operator in Latin America, said it inked a deal to bring the iPhone to more than a dozen countries in that region starting later this year.
Apple has so far signed exclusive deals for the iPhone with AT&T Inc. in the United States, O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and France Telecom's Orange wireless arm in France.
The American company has also in the past few weeks signed deals to sell the device in Canada as well as in Italy, while Vodafone Group PLC, the world's biggest mobile company by sales, will sell it in a total of 10 countries, including Australia, India, Italy and Turkey.
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