France Telecom’s Orange mobile phone unit today announced a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to a dozen additional countries.
The network will offer Apple’s device in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange’s African markets later this year.
Once again, this news quadruple confirms Apple to be moving away from its original strategy of offering iPhone through exclusive launch partners, as Swisscom this week also confirmed plans to offer iPhone in Switzerland. Vodafone will also offer iPhone in Portugal and Egypt.
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Are existing exclusive deals on their way out too?
The new twist with this is the questions it raises on the existing exclusive deals - T-Mobile currently has the exclusive deal in Austria.
For those who can read German, this is from the T-Mobile site:
WIEN, 13. März 2008 - Apple und T-Mobile geben Partnerschaft für den exklusiven Vertrieb des iPhones in Österreich bekannt.
That's from the announcement on 13 March, when they announced their exclusive deal.
I think 02 in the UK will
I think 02 in the UK will have exclusivity to the iPhone, that sucks! the UK is a huge mobile market and apple are really restricting themselves if they wont open it up to other Uk network...
Visual Voicemail
Are all these countries getting visual voicemail as well, or are they using traditional voicemail? While it's cool other places are getting the iPhone, if they aren't getting visual voicemail as well that sucks.