Quote:
Originally Posted by Walk Broad
I think it has more to do with the cellular tech that is slowing it down than Amazon not wanting to sell to as many people as possible.
It took the Apple many months to negotiate the iPhone release with Steve Jobs flying all over Europe talking to various head honchos and probably having the iPhone subjected to a number of test. 
There may be a whole lot of behind-the-scenes hoops to jump through so they don't have to make two versions of the same device (with the subsequent support required) that may be causing the delay. |
Actually in the case of Apple, I believe that the big problem was the revenue sharing model. Apple wanted a cut of each months revenue, and the carriers were a bit leery of doing so.
Also, the tech problem was more on apple side. With most networks in Europe having gone to 3g, and with limited public wifi access the holdup was probably to negotiate with the wi-fi providers, who were often rival cell phone companies
.
As for different models for different markets, think one of the companies developing the cellphone chips has a a dual CDMA/GSM chip and is marketing it in Japan/Korea.
So if amazon can get that into the kindle, they could possibly ship the same hardware worldwide, just changing the SIM for different markets. (some Newer CDMA phones also come with SIM cards)