Heard about it once before and the rumor surfaced again this week that Smart Communications was trying to bid to carry the iPhone 4 in the Philippines. It never materialized so we’ll have to put this entry in the speculative bin.
The iPhone 4 is the 3rd smartphone from Apple to be released exclusively thru Globe Telecom in the Philippines. Globe is partly owned by SingTel (which also got the exclusive deal in Singapore) so it probably was a package deal for them 2 years ago.
However, in some countries or regions, there are multiple carriers that distribute the iPhone. The unconfirmed story is that Apple offered Smart to be the 2nd distributor (or Smart asked Apple what it would take to be a distributor) of the iPhone 4 in the Philippines and the contract/offer was for about Php6 Billion (~$136 million).
Estimates put the total number of handsets in the 200,000 range for that distribution deal. That’s a lot of iPhone 4 they need to sell to get back on the 6B investment and considering a huge number of postpaid subscribers are already locked to Globe, it’s gonna be hard to hit that sales number with existing competition.
Some handset manufacturers tell me that if you can sell over 10,000 smartphones in the country, it’s already considered a hit model. The 100k to 200k figure seems too high a risk. That’s most probably the reason why there’s a 24-month lock-in period when getting a postpaid account for the iPhone — the carrier needs to get that investment back via long-term subscription plans on top of handset sales.
Then again, the media mileage one gets being an exclusive iPhone distributor as well as the coolness factor being an Apple-partner is also part of the package.
Kunin na lang ng smart yung new line up ng htc which is windows phone 7 os. Then advertise nila ng maganda para matalo iphone 4.
mukha mo jailbreak..haha ungas ka @ mr.bogus
aanhin naman ang exclusive kung may jailbreak naman!!!! o yeah!!!
Globe can carry the iPhone 1,000 for all I care. They should spend their money on improving service, coverage, etc. Geez, over the past two years that I have been on Globe’s Blacberry, there is hardly a week when I don’t experience problems! Back to basics for Globe – they suck, they used to be ahead, they brought GSM to the country, now they are playing catch up big time. Their service is so bad that I would rather go Sun than Globe.
I think Singtel has more leverage in this thing than Smart. To offset the costs of being THE carrier, Singtel created an umbrella effect where the cost of the phone can be carried by them with their children companies. Smart has no foreign blood to offset the cost, and as such, cannot carry the iPhone without getting crushed by the pricetag. It’s not that they refused, it’s because Smart doesn’t have the money or the connections for it.
Wrong decision by Smart! P6B is not so material to Smart considering that the net income of Smart in 2009 was in roughly P31 Billion…It’s a wrong decision for Smart if that was the case. P6B for just distributing a cool phone can go a long way..it can attract more subscribers, increase publicity, and can increase company morale.
now that SUN Cellular offers Blackberry, it is more likely the next carrier after Globe to sell iPhone. not likely iPhone 4 but who knows, baka in the coming iPhone generations. but by that time, Android Phones would have overtaken the apple device.
I think apple did not pick Smart because while being the largest telco by subscribers in the Philippines, Smart surprisingly has the lowest number of postpaid subscribers in the Country Globe being second and Sun having the highest also Globe has more high end postpaid subscribers.