iPhone coming to India soon

By Alex Armitage, (Bloomberg) – Vidafone Group Plc, the world's largest mobile-phone company, won a contract to sell Apple Inc.'s iPhone this year in 10 countries with a total population of more than 1.4 billion, including Australia, India and Italy.
Vodafone will also offer the iPhone in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, the Newbury, England-based company said in a statement today. Milan-based Telecom Italia SpA will also sell the iPhone in Italy by the end of the year, it said in a separate statement today.
The deal is a win for Vodafone, which lost out last year to Telefonica SA’s O2 and Carphone Warehouse Group Plc for the rights to distribute Apple's combination media player and mobile phone in the U.K., which has a population of 60.8 million. For Apple, the agreement is part of Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s plan to capture more buyers outside the U.S.
Last month, Cupertino, California-based Apple reiterated its plan to ship 10 million iPhones in 2008, capturing 1 percent of the global mobile-phone market. The company sold almost 4 million iPhones last year. Apple already sells the device in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Austria and Ireland.
Emerging Markets
In the past two years, Vodafone has bought stakes in wireless operators in India and Turkey to tap faster-growing emerging markets and has said it wants to expand in other countries.
In India alone, mobile operators have added more than 8 million wireless subscribers each month for the past six months, making the country the fastest-growing major wireless market.
Vodafone shares fell 0.8 pence, or 0.5 percent, to 162.7 pence at 10:44 a.m. in London trading. Apple rose $3.79, or 2.1 percent, to $184.73 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday.
San Antonio-based AT&T Inc., Apple's exclusive provider of the iPhone in the U.S., has said it will sell a new version of the handset later this year. The new iPhone is expected to offer faster downloads from the Internet over so-called third- generation, or 3G, wireless networks.
Source: Bloomberg