Taipei  - Chunghwa Telecom Ltd and Apple Inc plan to jointly launch the third-generation Apple iPhone in Taiwan before the end of the year, the Taiwan firm said Saturday.

A Chunghwa Telecom official said Taiwan would be among the third wave of countries to launch the iPhone 3G since Apple released the device on July 11 in 22 countries in the first wave of marketing.

Chunghwa Telecom has yet to set service charges for the operation of the iPhone 3G, said the company official who asked not to be named.

The new version of the iPhone operate on so-called 3G networks, which are much faster for data downloads and internet surfing than the Edge networks used by the original iPhone, which was released last year. The new version also features a GPS location device. (dpa)