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Apple COO Tim Cook offered up some interesting iPhone-related tidbits during a speech at the Goldman Sachs investor conference in Las Vegas yesterday. Suffice to say, Cook is bullish on Apple's prospects to continue to sell truckloads of iPhones and expand its availability.

In order to get the iPhone into more markets, Cook indicated Apple would be willing to drop some important features and services, such as Visual Voicemail, which allows you to see who left your messages and listen to them in any order, and move beyond its current business model of partnering with a single mobile operator per market.

That's all find and dandy. Apple has every right to change its tune regarding carrier exclusivity, for example. But when Cook says, "Apple is not married to the single, exclusive-carrier model," does that mean you'll soon be able pick up an iPhone from operators other than Apple's current carrier-partners in markets where the iPhone is already available? Not necessarily.

With operators like AT&T, the exclusive provider of the iPhone in the U.S., Apple signed long-term agreements. While it is not known exactly how long these deals are supposed to last, the length of the contract with AT&T, for instance, is said to be for five years.

So unless Apple gets out of its contract with AT&T (buying it out, perhaps), it could be a long time before we see Sprint, Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile offer versions of Apple's smartphone this country. After all, we're still months away from late June and the first anniversary of the iPhone's availability in the U.S. even.

This single-carrier strategy doesn't seem to have hurt sales all that much, as some predicted it would. Apple has sold over 4 million iPhones thus far and, according to Cook, is on track to meet its goal of shipping 10 million this year, in spite of today's cloudy economic climate. .

Here are a few more things Cook had to say:

More customers are satisfied with the iPhone than any other product Apple's every shipped, even the Mac.

The hacking of the iPhone to work with carriers other than those sanctioned by Apple is most likely here to stay. And the pervasiveness of hacking shows how high the pent of demand is for the iPhone, which, as of today, is only officially offered in four markets (e.g. the United States, United Kingdom, France, & Germany). 

(It's estimated hackers have unlocked one in four iPhones sold. For example, hundreds of thousands of iPhones have been smuggled into China, which is ironic considering many of these were built in that country.)

Apple will roll out the iPhone in more European markets and finally ship it in Asia this year.

1,000 Web applications already available for the iPhone. Forthcoming SDK will make the iPhone even more compelling.

The SDK, due to be introduced at a special Apple event on March 6th, will enable developers to create and distribute official applications that run directly on the iPhone and not through its Safari browser from a remote location. While this is possible today, it is only with unofficial programs enabled to run on the iPhone through what’s called jailbreaking.)

 

For more, check out Apple’s audio stream of Cook's Goldman Sachs presentation here.

[Via MacDailyNews]