On Wednesday, Softbank Corp. announced that it would start selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Japan later on in 2008. No further information regarding the smartphone’s release date or pricing has been made public. Softbank is currently the third largest mobile communications carrier in Japan.

The iPhone is slowly becoming available everywhere.

In the beginning of May, Orange announced that in 2008, it would bring the iPhone in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. Several countries were mentioned including Austria, Belgium, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland.

At the end of May, Stockholm-based TeliaSonera announced that it has closed a deal with Apple, according to which the former will start distributing the iPhone in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia later on this year.
Also in May, four major companies in the Asia-Pacific area announced that they would start distributing the iPhone. SingTel will bring the device in Singapore, Bharti Airtel Ltd. will take on India, Optus will cover Australia and Globe Telecom Inc. will sell the iPhone in the Philippines.

There still is one issue to be addressed by Apple: in April, China Mobile stated that once Apple comes up with a proper business model, the company will be brought aboard for officially launching the device on the Chinese market. China Mobile has about 384 million customers, which is more than the population of the U.S.