At the WWDC keynote earlier this month, Steve Jobs proclaimed that the iPhone 3G would find its way to 70 countries before the end of the year—22 of them on the infamous July 11th. But there were a few notable absences in that giant Risk-like map of world domination—notably both of the world’s largest countries (for population *and* area).

Of course, plenty of iPhones have made their way to Russia and China on the gray market in the past year, but with Apple’s apparent intention to eventually render that distribution method toothless, it is striking that these two prominent countries are still unaccounted for (Apple has struck a separate deal to bring the iPhone 3G to Hong Kong and Macau, which are considered “special administrative regions” of the People’s Republic of China).

Full story: macworld.com