Say what? iPhone available for purchase at Amazon Germany?

"Im Angebot von Amazon.de seit: 17. August 2004"

According to their product information, they have been offering the iPhone since August 17, 2004...

I preordered it and got March 16th as delivery date..
"Voraussichtliches Versanddatum für diesen Artikel: 16 März 2007"

But I agree with Mikey, they do get dates wrong, especially for books. I don't think I need to start saving for the phone right now.

This confirms what I already expected for months.
The US has a culture of locked phones (and people hate it)
It will be impossible for Apple to follow that strategy in Europe. Consumers would just revolt. We buy our phones full featured. Of course you can get deals when you also take a subscription. But you can buy any phone without a subscription and fully functional in the EU.
That explains also the so called "high" price. This is actuallly the REAL price. It's gonne be fun to see how parellel import guys gonne play with this.....

I preordered mine today and whatever it will cost, I've waited for this pone more than 3 years now, rumors, fake reports. I just can't take it any more, I want the best mobile phone on the planet and I'm sure it will work best with my powerbook G4 because it comes in the tradition of Apple Inc. Hardware. You buy it, you love it.

This isn't so unusual. They also write that you can pre-order with no price risk. If the price is getting lower you just have to pay that. Also this price sounds correct if you think of the price without a 2-year-contract. Anyway even if this is clearly no fake, it is pretty early from Amazon but not bad selling-policy (see the ranking already on #76!).

am I the only one thinking 1300$ is a bit much? I think I'll go with a MacBook for that price...

I'll have to wait till the iPhone nano comes out.

Might as well be true. It look as if Apple is selling it via their Apple Amazon store. Also getting regulatory approval might be much faster here in Germany and so it makes perfectly sense that they it in March.

@#18 (Jay): Huh? Who say's it will only be supported thru T-Moblie? Seriously, were did that info come from, last thing I heard was that all providers are quite interested, but no exclusivity deal was struck yet.

Anyway, I have a Vodafone-branded Motorola, and it works quite happily with my T-Moblie SIM-Card slotted in. Most german cellphones are not provider-locked (And those which are usually are cheapos sold subsidized together with a prepaid SIM-Card. I just can't imagine the iPhone being sold with a prepaid SIM for 199 Euros ;-) ).

Apart from the prepaid-market, the customer lock-in usually happens at the contract level, not at the SIM-Card/Phone-Level - You can either buy a phone for the full price, or you get one somewhat cheaper bundled with a 2 year service contract. BUT as long as you pay your contract base fee for those 2 years, you can use your phone with whatever SIM-Card you like. Or pay the full price up front, without contract.

As for the price. 800 - 1000 Euros was pretty much what I was expecting after I heard about the 499$ Pricetag with contract for the US Market. The subsidies for a contract are usually 200 - 300 Euros here, and if you add Apple's overseas tax (i.e. a 100$ product costs 120 Euros), you get to that price.

Still very brave of amazon to offer a product that doesn't even have FCC-Approval in the US yet, let alone any certifications for Europe...

Amazon has been doing this before: They usually offer novelties (like new Macs, iPods etc.) for pre-order very quickly, usually at a rather high price which gets reduced later as soon as the item is available officially. They obviously try to get pre-orders before any other sellers.
In this case there seems to be some risk for Amazon, since the iPhone might not be available for resellers at all -- I am pretty sure that Apple will try to find an exclusive partner here as well (and I only hope that it will not be T-Online ...).

"Vorbestellen" means pre-order.