At a birthday party for chipmaker Intel held in Munich, Hannes Schwaderer, CEO of Intel Germany, confirmed that Apple will be using the company's new Atom processor in a future version of the iPhone. Iit won't be the iPhone that we've come to know and love, or the 3G model expected soon, but a new, larger version — possibly a rumored mini-tablet. Less pocketable than an iPhone, less useful than the MacBook Air. Let the Apple Newton jokes commence! Update: Intel has written in to say everyone's wrong! No larger iPhone with or with Intel Inside™.(Photo by Windell Oskay)

Apple will sell iPhones in Singapore, India and Australia through Singapore Telecommunications, Bharti Airtel, Globe Telecom, and SingTel subsidiary Optus, respectively. With the Optus deal, Apple will abandon its prior strategy to sign only exclusive deals with service providers; Vodafone, which operates a rival carrier in Australia, also agreed to a deal with Apple last week. [WSJ]

Yesterday AT&T added language to its website that promised iPhone subscribers free Wi-Fi hotspot access to the company's listing of features for customers. A few hours later, the offer was removed from the site. The rollout for free Wi-Fi for iPhone subscribers on AT&T's network isn't going so smoothly — after the unannounced program was discovered, hackers shortly discovered they could log any device onto the network quite easily. (Photo from Jajah)

Did you know that there are people in certain parts of the world who have never even seen an iPhone? Fortune has helpfully mapped out the fetishized Apple product's availability. The countries where one can procure an iPhone (at least by this summer) are marked in red. (Sucks to be you, Russia!) Of course, the map does not include black-market iPhones. [Fortune]

After news that NBC had asked Microsoft to develop content filtering technology to keep infringing files off the Zune spread like wildfire, Cesar Menendez, a Microsoft employee working on the Zune, said there was no agreement between the television network and the technology company to implement any such plan.

Already "walled off" from any discussion of Apple's iPhone, Google CEO Eric Schmidt could see his role on Apple's board of directors further diminish. Google's interest in wireless hardware powered by Android software and its investment in Clearwire's WiMax network pose apparent conflicts with Apple's interest in 3G iPhones. [BusinessWeek] (Photo AP/Michel Euler)

A source tells us that "someone who designed part of the iPhone UI, who generally has access to new hardware locked down in a room to play with, " told him that the new iPhone will run on faster 3G networks, as expected; feature new, improved speakers on the bottom; and an improved camera. It will hit stores June 12. Our source warns us: "The person has mixed details before." Our guy puts his friend's trustworthiness at an 8 out of 10.

Late last fall, Vodafone successfully persuaded a German court to bar T-Mobile from selling locked iPhones in Germany, arguing that purchasers of Apple's smartphone should be able to choose any carrier. Don't expect the company to hold to those open-access beliefs now. Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement to become the new service provider for Apple iPhones in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. No details on pricing or whether Vodafone will sell a long-rumored new version of the iPhone that will run on Vodafone's higher-speed 3G networks.

AT&T meant to make Wi-Fi free only for iPhone users. But a hack made it free for laptop users at Starbucks and other network points controlled by AT&T. The free Wi-Fi has now been disabled. Guess the hoi polloi stealing bandwidth ruined it for iPhone owners. [Gizmodo]

AT&T is offering iPhone owners free Wi-Fi at hotspots managed by the company, including those at megachain Starbucks. But all the system checks is the user-agent string supplied by the iPhone's Safari browser and a phone number from a working iPhone. So anyone with a laptop can simply change their browser's user-agent string, put in the phone number of a friend with an iPhone, et voila! Free Wi-Fi. Why you won't get? The phone number of the cute barista you've been flirting with in vain. (Via Slashdot, photo by Synthesis Studios)

Forbes has exactly two tones: Sarcastically skeptical, if editors thinks its readers don't own a stock, and breathlessly promotional, if they think they do. "The iPhone: Apple's Magic Wand" is an example of the latter. Its writers hail the "touch-sensitive wonder phone" and say "the broad outlines of Steve Jobs' grand strategy for wireless domination are coming into focus." At least when slavering gadget blogs call it the "Jesusphone," there's a hint that they might be tongue in cheek. The Forbes scribes give no such hint.

Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn will manufacture and ship the first batch of new, faster 3G-network enabled iPhones by June, according to reports from Taipei, Taiwan. 3 million should ship that month, and an estimated 25 million over the life of the product. Foxconn is the sole manufacturer of the current generation of iPhones. But it has also been known to break Chinese labor laws — not that such practices would stop your typical antiwar environmentalist here in the Bay Area from upgrading. After all, that Yes, We Can video will download so much faster from YouTube now! (Photo by AP/Jason DeCrow)

In advance of a rumored new, faster and possibly very different iPhone in June, European retail partners have begun slashing prices on the fetish object in order to encourage sales while potential buyers wait for the latest model, reports the Times of London. T-Mobile has cut prices a drastic 75 percent, to only €99 ($155), which is cheaper than you can get it on this side of the pond. Many of the retailers still expect to take losses on marked-down and unsold inventory, and blame themselves for ordering too much inventory amidst the hype generated by Steve Jobs's reality distortion field. The Times article also serves up on speculation on what the new iPhones might look like.

"If I knew [the release date for the new iPhone], why would I announce it in the middle of a sentence at the Finnish embassy, rather than report it in the Wall Street Journal?" — mid-six-figure-salary Journal gadgeteer Walt Mossberg, on earning his keep. Left unanswered: What was he doing at the Finnish embassy in the first place? [Silicon Alley Insider]

There are no iPhones available at stores in France or the U.K., in addition to the coast-to-coast shortage reported in the U.S. What's the problem? No one is sure, but it could be anything from component supply problems to a new product introduction. The latter seems more likely; Apple usually has a well-run supply chain. Even so, we don't see Steve Jobs launching an iPhone upgrade without a big event. An unscheduled one, possibly at the big CTIA Wireless convention currently running in Vegas? Not his style — Jobs likes to hog the stage.

In a survey of iPhone owners, Rubicon Consulting found that a third of iPhone users carry a second phone in addition to their iPhone. I'm one of those folks: I have a T-Mobile phone that I use for personal calls; I use my iPhone as a business phone and for mobile Web and email. I didn't want to break my T-Mobile contract and I'm happy paying for a second phone to keep work and home separate. I didn't think I was the only one with two phones, but 33 percent seems surprisingly high. Here's something the survey didn't tell you, but you might have guessed: iPhone users have lots of disposable income. More details from the study after the jump.

Two employees of the Salem, N.H., Apple Store (where I shop, natch) have been arrested and charged with stealing 332 iPhones. No word on what the two delinquents did with the phones, worth almost $133,000, but we suspect they were sold off to be unlocked overseas. Here's what I want to know: How the hell did they steal 300-plus phones?

Motorola, mortally wounded, is spinning off its handset business in slow motion. CEO Greg Brown expects the deal to go through next year. There's no Razr on the horizon to spur sales, thanks to former CEO Ed Zander's overreliance on the model. In San Francisco cofeeshops, the popular theory is that Apple's iPhone killed Motorola. Nonsense. Motorola killed Motorola. The population of the Bay Area is 7.2 million; despite the appearance that every man, woman, and child here now has an iPhone, Apple will be lucky to have sold that many by now.

Tech publisher O'Reilly Media has released a book targeted to unsanctioned developers on Apple's iPhone mobile platform. iPhone Open Application Development tells coders how to write programs for "jailbroken" iPhones — those that have been hacked to remove Apple's block on unsanctioned software. All of which seems outdated, now that Apple has released instructions for writing approved apps. O'Reilly will surely rush out another book on that subject. But why not just sell one book to everyone? That seems easier.

Apple executives will meet with music labels next week to discuss selling music subscriptions on iTunes, the New York Times notes, confirming prior reports. At the meetings, label execs will argue that customers are ready for subscriptions because they're used to watching movies expire after they rent them on iTunes. Despite his long-held reservations, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is reportedly willing to listen. He's even said to be considering making music subscriptions part of purchasing an iPod or iPhone — probably just to spite NBC CEO Jeff Zucker.