Mum is no longer the word; Apple is hosting a media event in its flagship Apple Store on Regent Street in London on September 18th, 10 AM local time. They’re conveniently hosting it one week before their huge Apple Expo Paris.
O2 is still the main partner candidate for the UK, and there are new strong indicators that reaffirm that, based off CEO Peter Erskine’s remarks about the apparently unprecedented revenue sharing. He also apparently believes that the iPhone is an iconic device.
iPodObserver has posted a hint about blocking international roaming charges, which are still in the news after someone racked up $4000 worth of roaming charges. You call AT&T at 1-800-335-4685 and ask for them to block your phone temporarily, for both voice and data.
Or, as noted by the Consumerist, you could just pop out the sim card. You can still check stocks, weather, view videos, check email, browse the web, and do more or less everything except for:
My guess is no, but there’s a “leaked” T-Mobile Germany document that shows it. And it looks like a bad photoshop to me, as if someone turned the quality knob for jpeg compression all the way down.
I’m not going to link the image, as I won’t sully the front page with such a heinous job. If you like, you can see it
here,
here,
here, or
here. The best summary I’ve read comes from the last link:
Although there’s been no official announcement, O2 has long been rumored as the carrier that will be selling the iPhone in the United Kingdom. They’ve recently announced that they’re building out their EDGE network; something they hadn’t ever bothered to do previously. Actually, most of Europe hasn’t bothered installing the EDGE portion of their network; carriers (sorry, operators) activating EDGE in Europe is tantamount to tacit admission that they will be carrying the iPhone. I leave you with this gem from a Nokia Siemens marketroid:
“A typical upgrade for a country-wide network would be measured in weeks”
The Financial Times of Germany reports that Apple gets 10% of the revenue from every phone call and data charge in exchange for regional exclusivity. I’m not surprised to see that the revenue sharing deal is different in Europe than AT&T’s revenue sharing, since contracts and charges in Europe are so different than contracts and charges in the U.S.
What does surprise me is that Apple is already regarded as an industry heavyweight. It turns out that only Research in Motion, Blackberry creators, have the same deal:
“These are not negotiations among equals. Apple clearly had the upper hand.”
figure 1: Just so we’re all on the same page, this is Europe.
O2 in the UK, Orange in France, and T-Mobile in Germany. According to the German version of the Financial Times, the deal is done, set in stone, and not up for discussion. They apparently agreed to terms very similar to AT&T’s terms; Vodaphone is apparently #1 on the list for the remaining European nations. [via]
The article doesn’t mention the most important thing about the European carrier, however (important, at least, to North Americans). There are businesses who make it their work to take advantage of foreign economies to purchase an unlocked mobile device and then resell it in a different nation. Some nations, like Belgium, mandate that all phones are sold unlocked. So, one might be able to buy an unlocked iPhone via Belgium, for example. The purchaser may end up with a European warranty, sending their device across the Atlantic to have it serviced, or an outright refusal to service the warranty.
The idea is that the purchaser gets an iPhone on Rogers or T-Mobile, etc, instead of Cingular. It’s not possible to get an iPhone on Sprint, Verizon, or Alltel, unless you can get one of them to give you a SIM card, which you likely can’t. We will, of course, post updates as they come.
