After TIM in Italy, is Russia next for iPhone?

Quincy Pince-Nez
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March 30, 2008
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We've known for awhile that TIM Italy was in the iPhone carrier settings...but for some reason they haven't gotten the the green light to announce the iPhone.  Perhaps it all went bad.  Or they are waiting for 3G?  Or maybe it is only a matter of days.  Strangely, the created on dates for TIM are the same (Dec 12th 2007) as Orange in France, O2 in the UK and Tmobile in Germany, with Tmobile Austria and O2 in Ireland created later (February 2008).

 

Something tells us that TIM and Apple had a falling out.

Onto a possible Russian iPhone possibility...

 

We're not sure how long it has been there, but Russian text input is joining German, English, French and Italian as the default input languages in the System/Library/TextInput Folder of the iPhone.  Perhaps we'll see an iPhone in Russia next?

Comments (7)

The Postman (not verified) | March 30, 2008 - 2:20pm

The deal with TIM and the Italian market in general is possibly a bit tricky for Apple and their business model- principally the almost total lack of a post-pay market. Where and how does Apple make up for the cut that AT&T etc are handing over? Tim Cook mentioned a couple weeks back that Apple might look at other models in such countries. I'm just praying that TIM doesn't get the iPhone exclusively. Words cannot describe how useless Italy's incumbent is. It is, however, a market Apple wants and needs to get into pretty quicky- it's affluent, it's large, and, while not always a tech-savvy market, it's a very very brand conscious one, at all age levels.

pwn newb (not verified) | March 30, 2008 - 2:36pm

How would TIM use the Iphone anyway. Most of the italian use pay as you go SIM cards.....

frank (not verified) | March 30, 2008 - 3:23pm

iPhone is officialy TIM in Italy and the OFFICIAL CONFIRMED date (100% reliable sources) is July with a 16GB version for 399 euros

admin | March 30, 2008 - 3:30pm

hey frank got a source - or did you pull that out of your backside?

frank (not verified) | March 30, 2008 - 3:34pm

I work for a magazine in Italy and am friends with a top manager at TIM. That is what HE told me when he saw my hacked iphone.

I'm not sure if it was a secret, he didn't mention it being so, and said it at a dinner in front of many people but anyways i'd like to keep my/his identity secret in case it was actually meant to be a secret....

Marco Eldora (not verified) | March 31, 2008 - 9:53am

Don't believe in people who say i'm a friend of top manager bla bla bla...they don't know nothin like all of us for the iPhone in Italy.

The unique official news is that Bernabè (CEO of Tim) has confirmed that they still in talk with Apple for the release of iPhone (this news came from Milano Finanza an economic newspaper here in Milan at the end of February) and no other news came after that few words.

For sure somethin went wrong in the first place...we just hope to see it soon here in Italy.

Frank (not verified) | March 31, 2008 - 4:45pm

Marco, non è uno scherzo. E' la verità. Questo è cio che mi è stato detto da un "top manager" e questo è quello che ho riportato in questo commento. Mi ha anche detto alcune altre cose.

Comunque, magari non è vero chissà... magari voleva depistarmi chissà... solo il tempo lo dirà...

ciao