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Who cares about Nordic - lets go India, China and Asia where the growth is - SJ is stop this age old strategy of Europe first and then Asia - times have changed Asia first and then Europe - really. open some store in india and china before too late

You should care. Even though Nordics is only about 22-23 million people. They do buy more smart phones pr year than germans do.

GSM has its infancy in the Nordics and is home of 2 of the major phone vendors (Nokia and Ericsson)

If Apple can do it here - they can do it anywhere

oh yeah if they can do it anywhere - my point exactly.
just do it in Asia and Indian and Brazil and russia - ever heard of BRIC countries...Europe will follow. No point dealing with each country individually for years what is the point of a European Union anyways?

"Nordic telecommunications operators TeliaSonera and Telenor said Friday they are BOTH in active talks with Apple Inc. regarding a deal over the much-hyped iPhone," Dow Jones reports"
OK, I know I'm being picky, but shouldn't that say, "Nordic telecommunications operators TeliaSonera and Telenor BOTH said Friday they are in active talks with Apple Inc. regarding a deal over the much-hyped iPhone"?

I somehow doubt that each company said they are both in talks, much more likely that both companies said they are each in talks. The distinction may seem subtle, but still valid.

The thing is every Norwegian can afford an iPhone. Most Swedes and Finns can also afford an iPhone.

Japan and South Korea aside, most Asians and South Americans cannot afford a cheap computer with a pirated Windows OS, let alone a top end cell phone.

You said, "Who cares about Nordic - lets go India, China and Asia where the growth is - SJ is stop this age old strategy of Europe first and then Asia - times have changed Asia first and then Europe - really. open some store in india and china before too late"

Asia is still the arm pit of the world when it comes to anything buy manufacturing. Sure they have cheap labor and do not mind dumping their toxins on the farm land, yet. But stealing is just ok with everyone over there. People use each other all the time.

Microsoft is giving its software away over there cause people will steal it rather than buy it. What are they asking for Vista now, $3??

So, drop this focus on "the most sold" or the largest mfg, etc. That worked 20 years ago. Now the world is much more complex. Just ask Apple. If you can catch up with them.

PS, Why America and Europe? Trends. Just look at who sets the trends. Sure, all kind of stuff comes out of Asia, but it does not become a trend until Europe or the USA makes it one.

MDN=force May the force, and a little insite, be with you young Jedi.

"Japan and South Korea aside, most Asians and South Americans cannot afford a cheap computer with a pirated Windows OS, let alone a top end cell phone."

@Big Al
lol, so true!

Asia will get the iPhone once it goes 3G in 2008. That's what Steve Jobs said, that's what'll happen. My understanding is Japan doesn't even have EDGE, so the iPhone would be pretty much useless there until a newer version comes out.

Another point is adding language support for the prediction/autocorrection feature for the virtual keyboard.
Will Apple think it's worth the trouble and cost to add 5 languages for 5 small countries (all less than 10M).

Scandinavian languages follow the same structure as English, so an updated dictionary (+frequency table?) is sufficient. But for Finnish, a modified algorithm is needed. Finnish is a synthetic language, meaning that e.g. for each verb, approx. 15 million different words can be derived, indicating person, tense, intent, duration etc. So a simple lookout-table will not do. A whole lot of work for 80.000 customers (1% of 8 million).

In iWork Pages, it has not been worth the trouble for Apple: there's no Finnish spell-check/hyphenation.

are you as dumb as you look??

Coe out of your cave - what are you 60 years olds.
Obviously you haven't looked at who has the best jobs on Wall Street and Silicon Valley these days - have you now????

Asian has more per capita smartphones than all of Europe combined bte - only if you did some research.
Do you know Asia already uses only 3G - unlike the USA????
and have wifi in all their subways??

broaden your horizon a bit - stop watching abc, CBS, NBC, Fox all day long

are you guys really that ignorant- the biggest steel co is mitral - India based.
richest guy in uk is Indian
Tata motors of India in talks to buy jaguar.
Asia hahad the same pcs as the rest of the world for quite some time
btw Europe'a armpits must be cleaner than the rest of their body even when they shower.
when china's market crashes rest of the world follows - do you care when European markets fall - neither do I.

" a cheap computer with a pirated Windows OS"

WTF?
Are you telling me that the $5 copy of Vista Ultimate I bought in Shanghai on the street that came in that nice plastic bag with images of Mickey and Pluto in Christmas garb was a fake?

Good thing I kept my receipt.

You paid 5 dollars - when I was in new york I got some copies for 2 dollars and what about the viruses I downloaded from napster and kazaa - where was that - nah not in shanghai - any ides where that was;)

Also simetiing about enron....

Regarding targeting China for iPhone:

China is probably a bigger market than you might think. Annual sales of new passenger cars in China last year were around 8 million, which is about half of what was sold in the US.

Oh dear!

This thread is full of infantile codswallop.

Strictly for the undemanding under-fives!

To all of you people saying screw europe and go for Asia, you don't know what you are talking about. Europe is a huge natural market for a smart phone like the iPhone whereas it won't do as well in Asia even when it is released there. Asia likes cheap phones, except perhaps Japan which has a long history of *not* buying Apple products very much. How many people there are in a market is not the only determining factor of sales.

As one responsible for IT support and platform issues for a 15000+ employee hospital (largest in Scandinavia) it matters to me who ends up with the iPhone contract here.

Telia is said to be introducing their Turbo 3G net here in Stockholm next month, so if we aren't going to get the iPhone here through them until next year I'm hoping that it can deliver the goods over something faster than EDGE.

BTW a leading radio host here in Stockholm got his iPhone today from a company that specializes in buying them in the US and hacking them to work with local SIM cards.

I don't care how many people in China and India can afford a car or a cell phone, most can't even afford a cheap computer with a pirated Windows OS.

Over 50% of the people in India and China have never even made a phone call.

That's reality.

The richest guy in the UK is Indian.

Ha Ha,

The richest guy in the USA is an asshole. Same goes for Mexico.

What does that have to do with the vast majority of people in India and China?

As long as the Danish courts keep handing out absurd rulings, Apple should stay away from this part of the world and concentrate on Asia.

Just my $0.02

Telenor stated that in August, 7 out of 10 phones sold in their stores in Sweden are 3G phones. But I expect quite a good sale because of the "cool" factor. Big sale will not happend until they bring out a 3G iPhone. Personally I will wait until then. For the record, I'm a Macuser since 1990 and I got my first iPod out of the first batch that arrived in Norway.

Further, eventhough the combined population is small, mobile phones are substancially more frequent than in the USA. Most kids aged 10 and above have a mobile phone which they mainly use for text messages and MMS, regrettably not possible with the iPhone. A lot of people have ditched ordinary phones and just use mobile phones. In our family of 3, there's 5 phones in use, just switching SIM cards.

Yes, there's a very large market in Asia, but look on what type of phone they buy. They buy simple, cheapest phones, which is fully understandable. I would had done the same if I was a poor labourer. A iPhone in it's present incarnation is just out of reach. Of course, I wish Apple would bring out a cheap phone for them as well, but I don't see it coming.

Just to set it straight, in Scandinavia, US is regarded as backwater when it comes to mobile phones usage!

its a non issue
Asia is the next market along with India russia and china.
The ignorants will be left behind.

And remember many in Scandinavia has two mobile phones, one private and one for work.

Personally I sometimes have four mobiles phones in front of me , three work phones and one private!

But its going to be though for Apple to penetrate the historically hardcore SonyEricsson and Nokia camps in Sweden and Finnland.

105% of the population here owns a mobile telephone. Now you ask how is that possible? Well... many owns two. They sell over 2 million mobile phones here every year. We are only 5.2 million so that is quite well done. If Apple will 1% of the market they still would sell 20 000 every year,

@Big Al.

Man you're ignorant. 50% of China and India may not be able to pay to make phone calls, but the other 50% most certainly can. Now, take into account that both countries have populations approaching 1billion and suddenly you have a prospective customer base (in either country) which is significantly bigger than the customer base in the US or all of Europe combined.

Come down off your superior high-horse and learn a bit about demographics and marketing. dumb-ass!

Oh, Big Al, I forgot to add, China and India are two of the World's fastest growing economies. If you want to seize a large share of a new market, you get in early. Apple would do well to learn that lesson soon. Microsoft is working VERY hard to capture a large portion of China's market (hence they're virtually giving Windows away in that market). Good luck to them, since the Chinese government is huge on open standards and Unix, unlike the hipocritical US government.

I already have an iPhone in Sweden that works just fine. What I want is an iPhone that works with 3s fast (7.2 Mbit/s $24/month).