“Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany, will reportedly begin selling 3G version of Apple’s iPad 2 directly in their retail stores across Germany, Austria, Greece, Poland and the Netherlands,” Christian Zibreg reports for 9to5Mac.
“iFun.de explained this morning that even though the wireless operator has had 3G data tariffs for iPad 2 owners for some time in their offering, they have never gotten to actually selling the hardware themselves,” Zibreg reports. “The site stopped short of providing availability or pricing information and noted Deutsche Telekom is expected to make an announcement in due time.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Apple’s win on tablet market will depend on whether the company will ensure wall-to-wall availability and accessibility in as many countries as possible.
iPhone’s sales policy, which used exclusive channels for many markets, worked well for only limited period of time. Now, in many “not important” market Apple has much lower smartphone share lever than it should exactly because of availability (and local pricing problems).
iPad 2 started much better than that, and if Apple will do its job, competitors will have much harder time pushing copycats — unlike what happened, and still happens now with iPhone.