The Mexican government, in an effort to fight crime, has been urging residents to register their mobile phones and identities, however it appears that over 30 million line still have not and those will likely be shut down in the coming weeks.
The law was passed in 2009 “to stop criminals from using cellphones for extortion and to negotiate ransoms in kidnappings,” says Reuters.
Critics of the law have called it ineffective, as criminals will now be more likely to pay off poor citizens to register the phones under their names.
America Movil, which controls 70 percent of the Mexican market, will lose about $10 million USD in revenue daily if those 30 million unregisterd lines are shutdown. The company has been trying to get an extension on the deadline for registering.
Result for: america movil
America Movil SAB has announced that it has inked a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to 12 countries in Latin America.
The media company said it would be bringing the phone to all of its Latin American operations but would not go into more detail about the arrangement, not even explaining if it was the exclusive carrier in the nations.
Apple says it plans to bring further expansion during the Q4 2008 by partnering with America Movil which has 160 million subscribers in 16 countries including Mexico and Brazil.
Over the last few weeks Apple has helped expand its iPhone worldwide signing deals with Rogers in Canada, Telecom Italia SpA in Italy; and Vodafone for 10 countries, including Australia, India, Italy and Turkey.
Apple says it has sold 5.5 million of the devices worldwide and has a year end goal of 10 million.
“We’re excited to be working with America Movil to bring the iPhone to Latin America later this year, and we can’t wait to get this revolutionary phone in the hands of even more people around the world,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.
Result for: america movil
The Spanish company Telefonica has announced it will distribute the iPhone to 16 countries in Latin America and the Czech Republic after striking a deal with Apple.
“The 16 countries where we will distribute the iPhone have a market potential of 500 million people, making us one of the global leaders in the distribution of these revolutionary handsets,” Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta said in a statement.
Telefonica already sells the phone in the UK and Ireland through O2 and will begin selling the device in Spain on July 11th.
The 16 new countries are the Czech Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Unlike its current markets however, the new markets will not be exclusive for Telefonica as America Movil has already signed a deal to distribute the phone in most of those countries.
