The availability of the Apple iPhone has just expanded to include both Austria and Ireland thanks to T-mobile and O2.  While the sale of unlocked iPhones continues to haunt Apple, they have made many attempts at increasing the availability of the phone worldwide by new partnerships with carriers.  T-mobile has already been in contracts with Apple’s iPhone in other parts of Europe, but today you can add Austria to the list.  O2, also already in contracts with Apple has made the iPhone available in Ireland which it hopes will see the same success.

With the recent buzz surrounding the iPhone Software Update 2.0, it comes as no surprise that the drive to introduce the iPhone to new markets is part of Apple’s global strategy.  The problem at this point is that the weaknesses in the iPhone SDK seem to hint at no background application activity which would severely limit the capabilities of 3rd party software such as AOL Instant Messenger and any application requiring an always-on mode.  Despite this limitation, the truth will come soon enough as the WWDC 2008 kicks off June 9-13 in San Francisco.  Hopefully we will see that Apple has a solution for 3rd party software requiring an always-on data connection, but until then plan on hearing more announcements on worldwide iPhone availability through new contracts with Apple.

[Credit: Pocket-link.co.uk]