T-Mobile? Or Vodafone?
Who will win Europe's iPhone distribution deal? I've been hearing Vodafone for a long time now but today TechDigest posts that T-Mobile may have the edge. Those usual suspects, the 'unnamed sources", are back. And this time those know-it-alls are saying that T-Mobile, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom, has taken over the lead.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile does not seem to have a big presence, at least according to the article, in France, Spain or Italy. Also, it's unclear whether the iPhone will have a eurowide release or be introduced in different countries in stages.
There's still, what, eight months or so before the iPhone bows in Europe. Is the iPhone going to get an exclusive deal? Who do you think will be the provider? Or will there be many operators and none of this exclusive nonsense?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
matthew Dearden said 4:08PM on 5-11-2007
Im from England and use tmobile for the Sidekick3, there service is increadably poor. i hope this is not who apple chose i think O2 should get it, there service is by far the best and most popular in the UK.
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andy said 4:15PM on 5-11-2007
please not vodafone, please not vodafone, please not vodafone, please not vodafone, T-mobile or Orange, plus... we are individual countries ;)
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Dan said 4:30PM on 5-11-2007
UK Apple Store is down.... ;-)
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Dan said 4:35PM on 5-11-2007
Back now - must have just been a momentary glitch.... :-(
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Thomas said 4:37PM on 5-11-2007
For the UK, I think T-Mobile has the best contract packages, apart from their crap coverage. o2 is by far has the best coverage. We just need o2 to make an iPhone contract package, and all will be good. And at least now, they are owned by Telefonica.
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Esme Vos said 4:50PM on 5-11-2007
If Apple sells the iPhone locked and through one operator, they will not sell many phones. Nokia is dominant in the high end phone market and that is how they sell phones. A locked or unlocked version - your choice. A lot of Europeans buy phones unlocked and prefer to pop in SIM cards when they please. The most recent EU survey shows that the predominant mobile phone subscription is pre-paid.
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DrWho said 4:53PM on 5-11-2007
If only it was T-Mobile in the US......
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fraserdrew said 5:29PM on 5-11-2007
T-mobile is soooo poor in the UK, coverage is dodgy just about everywhere:) vodafone is more expensive, but a very good company IMO.
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Jonesy said 5:33PM on 5-11-2007
I second the calls for o2, they are the only network i've been with that has had great coverage, great cs and call packages (data is a bit poor but not too hard to change). Orange is shocking, Vodafone lock you into their drm filled customized branded handsets (they even go so far as to change functionality of call and end keys on SE phones).
Sim free or no iPhone for me!
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Yemeth said 5:49PM on 5-11-2007
Deutsche Telekom has it's own online music shop "musicload" in Germany, which uses .wma-DRM and has a much higher marketshare in Germany than iTMS. This wouldn't work well together, I think.
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Gary Midgley said 6:03PM on 5-11-2007
looks like it will be t-mobile
http://www.vedico-shop.de/t-mobile/handy/handy-1000468.html
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Kenneth said 6:17PM on 5-11-2007
I always get a strange feeling of slight disgust reading about locked phones. Here in Belgium it is illegal to sell locked phones, which I think is the normal way to go (I do not know of other countries in which this is the case). Will this mean that, if Belgium is the only country where you can buy an unlocked version, all of europe will buy their iPhones in Belgium or, more realisticly, Apple won't be selling the iPhone in Belgium. If the latter is the case, I would be very dissapointed in Apple. I would be interested in what other people think about this.
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mars said 8:22PM on 5-11-2007
Anyone heard anything about a Canadian provider?
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John Dough said 10:17PM on 5-11-2007
Maybe not T-Mobile, Maybe O2 or maybe this website is full of it
http://www.vedico-shop.de/o2/handy/preiswert-handy-1000468.html
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revilo said 11:20PM on 5-11-2007
Well, I'm holding back my anger about apples decision since Macworld 07. How can apple do something so stupid and go with one carrier. From a business standpoint and apples recent behavior ..... sure, but this also means that apple gives a s... about their mac users which are using maybe other carriers than AT&T. Sorry, I love macs (apple) since high-school, but this is just a ridicules decision from apples management and honestly, apple you need a wake-up call, because you transform in this shitty, I give a shit company like Microsoft !!!
Wake up Steve and do what you did in the 90's, time for laying some more people off your staff and get back to "family rules" that apple stands for since you and your buddy founded it !!!
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Alex in Amsterdam said 1:53AM on 5-12-2007
I think the iphone will be available in Europe unlocked. At least here in the Netherlands all phones are available unlocked. And I hope it's NOT O2 as they are ONLY big in the UK, which, by the way, is not representative of all of Europe! Heck, most Brits refuse to believe they are part of Europe! :-)
My vote is for Vodafone. They are everywhere and I think they are OK.
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lios said 4:10AM on 5-12-2007
If they lock the iPhone to one carrier, they probably sell only 10% from potential. Really. If you live in USA stop thinking how things are done there, 'cause it just does not work like that in here.
If Apple is going to get anything selled they need to change two things:
First, add 3G. It's not future here, but reality.
Second, freedom of SIM.
If these two things does not change, that just tells how Apple things that England equals entire Europe and I might just consider switching back to PC as being discriminated.
We do not buy our phones from carriers, absolutely. Beside, not one of those rumored carriers are even EU wide, can someone even confirm if any carrier is. Doubt it highly. And yes, 3G is available trough and out everyplace and widely used even by common users, not just some business suite people.
So Steve, OPEN YOUR EYES and thing what you did differently before and how you are blined now if you try to force Europe to follow the same business style than USA.
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utumno said 5:00AM on 5-12-2007
As I understand it, the iPhone relies on several server-side features to make the "whizzbang" visual email etc work at all. If that's the case, then why would an unlocked iPhone work as Apple intends on a network not running the special network-side software? That seems like a guaranteed 100% return rate to me, with a 100% NFF return reason...
I expect to see one network exclusively license the iPhone in Europe for a relatively short period of time (say, 3 months) and then Apple extend the iPhone's coverage network-by-network. As to which network, I have no idea.
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lanny said 5:48AM on 5-12-2007
Olny one thing is for sure: in Hungary it will cost twice as much as anywhere in the world...
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robin D'Arcy said 6:14AM on 5-12-2007
i dont know how true this statement is but when i asked someone at T-Mobile UK they told me that they would almost certainly be carrying the iphone in the UK and that they could see a release in the UK in november/december time - just in time for christmas he told me - he sounded like he knew quite a bit - he was telling me how in the next few weeks they were going to be recieveing some units for testing with network compatibility or somthing
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