Apple Maybe/Maybe Not Complete In Europe
08.24.07 - 11:21am
According to Orange in France a deal that was rumored to be completed is not yet signed at the bottom line although talks are under way.
“There are several of us in talks with Apple to market the iPhone,” Louis-Pierre Wenes, a senior executive at France Telecom
This was said in response to a report that had been made by the Financial Times Deutschland earlier in the week that said that a deal with Orange was already made.
When Wenes was asked in an interview with Paris Match whether he could confirm a deal with Apple he said, “No. Several operators are still in talks with Apple. I think it will be several weeks before we have an announcement. A deal in September, as has been reported, seems impossible to me, if only for technical reasons.”
The Financial Times also reported that Apple had signed with Deutsche Telekon, owner of T-Mobile in Germany and O2 in the UK as well as the Orange, France deal.
The paper did say that the partnerships were to be announced at the International Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin later this month. Whether or not that announcement will be made remains to be seen. Apple always likes to wait until the most profitable time for them to formally announce a matter and the beginning of the fourth quarter would be a great time.
South Korea’s KFT is also in talks to sell the iPhone, although there has been no plans yet announced by Apple for releasing the phone in Korea and Asia.
“We have been trying to bring the iPhone here, but we have to wait,” Cho told The Korea Times. “The deal is up to the supplier, not us. Because the (Korean) market is so small, they will not release it until they have confidence in its marketability here.”
If the phone is sold in Korea by KTF they say that it will be under the new WCDMA platform, a 3G technology that the iPhone is considered easily adaptable to.
Since launching the first nationwide WCDMA service in Korea in March, KFT has drawn more than 1.5 million users.
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