Its official, Apple’s iPhone will officially be launched here in Singapore in the next few months. Singtel announced on Monday that they’ve clinched the deal with Apple, to launch the device later this year. But it declined to comment when it would launch and how it will be priced.

Singapore’s other rival telcom operators Starhub and M1 was silent on the matter, except that Starhub spokesman Michael Sim stated that he expect all three telcom operators in Singapore to offer the iPhone by the end of the year. All 3 telcom operators have been linked to discussions with Apple to bring in the 2007 device of the year, but apparently it stalled due to Apple’s insistence on an revenue-sharing model.

It’s Apple’s standard policy to sign exclusive distribution deals with one operator per market. Deals involve a 10 to 30 percent of phone revenues from its partners. This is why the main reason why operators in countries like China refuse to carry the iPhone. When news of Vodfafone and Telecom Italia would be selling the device in Italy, it clearly showed that Apple has begun to drop it’s one operator, one market policy.

Apple declined to comment if they had a revenue-sharing model with Singtel.

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Apple’s iPhone has been launched in numerous countries worldwide and they’ve adopted a one telcom carrier policy for their iPhones, until now. In Italy, which iPhones will be available by the end of this year will be available to 2 telcom carriers, Vodafone and Telcom Italia. This clearly signals a shift in Apple’s policy of one country, one carrier. Future buyers of iPhone will be glad to hear that this might be the future protocol of how Apple deals.

Telcom Italia Chief executive Franco Bernando apparently persuaded Steve Jobs to change Apple’s typical business model of signing a 2-year contract with a single carrier that would sell the iPhone exclusively, and split revenues with Apple. As a result, Telcom Italia would be able to offer the upcoming 3G iPhone with no carrier restrictions, making it more palatable to Italians, who are among the largest users of pre-paid plans. This will also mean that the price tag of the iPhone will be higher in Italy.

I can’t help but wonder if Apple’ll emulate this policy of 2 carriers in Singapore.

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Whoa! Reports from Fortune shows that AT&T is preparing a subsidy of $200 for consumers of the next-generation 3G iPhone, which is scheduled to make it’s debut this summer. The assumption is that, since the new and presumably faster models will start at the same $399 base price,that will drop the effective price to $199.

This is certainly good news for everyone as pretty soon, the market will be flooded with iPhones. Apple and AT&T are working hard to get the iPhone to a price that puts it within reach of most people. Research has shown that iPhone owners spend twice as much as the average customer because they buy data plans.

The report also stated that AT&T will offer subsidy to people who buy the iPhones in it’s flagstores, but not to those who buy in Apple stores. I’ve yet to confirm the degree of truth in this report since Apple keeps exceedingly tight control over its pricing.

My guess is that this report may be pointing the way to one of two (not mutually exclusive) developments:

AT&T wants to lower the price of the phone and raise the price of the data plans. Right now the unlimited data plan for the iPhone costs $20 a month, far less than the $45 a month the company charges for unlimited data on a BlackBerry. Now that the iPhone can also connect to corporate e-mail networks, AT&T may not be able to justify a gap in the monthly fees for its smartphones. To make up the difference, it could raise data rates and subsidize the phones. My guess, however, is that the $200 subsidy would be available to people who buy the phones from Apple stores as well.

Apple will start selling unlocked phones. Apple has found that an enormous number of its customers are unlocking the phones, using third-party software, to use on carriers of their choice. If Apple were to remain in keeping with its culture, it would simply try to make the next-generation iPhone even harder to unlock. But then again, it could decide to avoid this fight, change its business model and just sell phones. That would mean, presumably, giving up the monthly fee it gets from AT&T and other carriers. In this scenario, Apple might well raise the price of the iPhone to, say $599. But then it would have carriers offer subsidies in return for contracts, as most other handset makers do.

Here’s one prediction I will stand by: We will have more leaks that don’t entirely make sense and are not consistent with each other until Steve Jobs ascends some stage somewhere with some answers.

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The Apple iPhone team have just released iPhone SDK Beta 5. In this beta 5 released, the only noted changes are bug fixes and support for the latest iPhone OS. There are still known issues with this build.

If you are an ADC member you can check out more detailed release notes, the link is located in the iPhone SDK readme (it’s in the Known Issues section). 

The size of the SDK is about 1.11Gb and the version is iPhone_sdk_9M2173a. You can download a copy now over at Apple iPhone Dev Centre.

The final release of the iPhone SDK is expected to be released on WWDC in June.

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If you are wondering how come you cannot receive call on your iPhone when you are on either Youtube, Safari or online.

This is because when actively accessing the internet when connected via EDGE, downloading a website, downloading or sending email, or downloading a youtube video when a call is received, it will likely go straight to voicemail.

This is an EDGE limitation. The same does not, or should not apply when actively accessing the internet via WI-FI.

So don’t worry, there is no problem with your iPhone.

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