iPhone European resellers announced

After a few long months of waiting, the European Apple iPhone resellers are finally known. The selected vendors, of course, are going to have exclusive rights for offering the handset in their countries. After the success of the iPhone in the US, where AT&T offered it with a two-year contract it was completely understandable that there was no lack of candidates in Europe. An article in Financial Times reveals some details on the negotiations, including the fact that the European carriers had to campaign for personal talks with Steve Jobs himself.

The names of the network carriers that successfully closed the deal with Apple are O2 in the UK, Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany. They have all agreed to share parts of their revenue with Apple (we are talking about a good 10% of calls and data transfers charges) in order to get the precious contract. An unpleasant surprise for the customers can be the fact that Apple doesn't allow the carriers to subsidize the handset which otherwise is a rather common practice for most mobile devices sold by the carriers in those countries. Besides bringing significant profit, the companies hope that selling iPhone will benefit their brand image and will bring customers with higher budget for spending on telephony and data transfers. As for now, all the carriers are unwilling to comment on the matter but an official announcement will be soon to follow with the IFA Trade Fair at Berlin being just around the corner (doors open on August 31st).

This has once again confirmed Apple's intention to limit iPhone's sales to only UK, Germany and France until next year, when other European countries and Asia are expected to put their hands on the iPhone.