AppleInsider Staff"We have signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone," a spokeswoman for the carrier told Dow Jones, adding that the company will start selling the combined mobile phone and media player in November, without giving a precise date for the launch.
Apple recently held press events in both the UK and Germany to announce availability of the handset in those regions, but has not done so yet in France.
Thus far there is no mention of the deal on Apple's website or France Telecom's.
Apple has said that it will launch iPhone in the U.K. and Germany on November 9. Presumably, the French roll-out would take place around the same time.
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
20 Comments
I used Orange extensively on my iPhone on a trip to France. It is an outstanding service, with very impressive EDGE speeds.
Possibly Apple hadn't made an announcement because Visual Voicemail isn't in place yet.
If no-one had noticed, Apple is signed with the incumbant national operator for each country.
Orange aka France Telecom, O2 aka BT, T-Mobile = Deutsche Telecom - If i were to guess, for Netherlands it will be KPN, Italy would be TIM and Spain Telefonica, Belgacom for Belgium.
For obvious reasons to be honest - if you are in bed with the national operator, you can undercut the competition quite dramatically.
I would imagine that once this is known Vodafone's share price is going to plummet
Just my 2 Cents of course.
If you visit http://www.orange.fr/ you will see it is suffering from portalitis (a disease affecting sites where everything is there, including some else's kitchen sink, except what you wanted from it).
If you look it is announced there, but it is lost in the news section: announcement
by the way - from the article posted, the release date is November 9th - what a surprise that is?