Is Apple changing its iPhone business model?: Latest carrier deal pushes iPhone into Latin America

America Movil said yesterday it cut a deal with Apple Inc. to sell the iPhone throughout Latin America, including enormous markets such as Brazil and Mexico.
The carrier has an aggregate subscriber base of nearly 160 million customers in the region.
The news came on the heels of Vodafone Group plc’s statement earlier in the week that it would bring the iPhone to 10 of its markets, reversing its position taken last year that the device’s EDGE speeds and Apple’s demand for sharing data revenue were unacceptable.
Vodafone’s reversal — and a purported AT&T Mobility memo circulating on the Web that bars employees from taking vacations between June 15 and July 15 — appeared to indicate that a 3G iPhone is forthcoming.
More importantly, the deals with Vodafone and America Movil indicated to several analysts that Apple has changed the nature of its offer to operators, possibly dropping its demand for a share of data revenue in exchange for rapid growth in international markets.
Further, Telecom Italia also announced this week it had a deal with Apple, resulting in two operators — the other is Vodafone Italia — in one country offering the device, perhaps more evidence that Apple has dropped its revenue-share demand in exchange for exclusive operator rights to the device.
Trading data revenue for market share at a time when other manufacturers are struggling to match Apple’s unique user interface would make sense, according to analyst Tero Kuittinen, a RealMoney.com columnist. Generating as many iPhone users as possible as swiftly as possible could lay the groundwork for greater revenue from Apple’s own content offerings down the road, the analyst said.
America Movil, owned by Carlos Slim — purportedly the second richest man in the world after Warren Buffett — has rolled out 3G networks in 14 countries in Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil, according to Dow Jones newswire service.