European Release
On November 9, 2007, the iPhone was officially launched in Europe, in the United Kingdom and Germany. In the UK, sales go through the UK O2 unit of Telefónica, while in Germany, it is offered through Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile division. As in the case of the previous launch in the U.S., customers lined up as much as a day in advance to obtain the much anticipated phone.
However, the initial operating model of locking iPhone owners to one selected carrier has been controversial in Europe. In Germany, a competing operator, Vodafone, brought a legal case claiming that the arrangement was against German law. On November 20, 2007, an interim court order resulted in locked iPhone sales in Germany being temporarily stopped. The iPhone launch in France a few weeks later through the operator Orange faced the same legal issues. Other countries that will pose the same problems for the locked iPhone business model include Belgium, Italy, Finland, and Brazil.
On December 1, 2007, Tušmobil, the Slovenian mobile operator, started selling "unlocked" iPhones without an official contract with Apple. The offer caused confusion between Apple Europe, local media, and local Apple representatives.
On May 6, 2008, Telecom Italia announced that it had signed a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Italy by the end of 2008. It will probably be the second generation iPhone with 3G-UMTS capability.
On May 27, 2008, TeliaSonera released a press release stating that it would start selling the iPhone in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia during 2008.
On June 4, 2008, Movistar announced that it had signed a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Spain beginning on July 11, 2008.
On August 22, 2008, Estonian mobile operator EMT started selling iPhones.
On August 22, 2008, Vodafone Greece released iPhones in the Greek market.
On September 26, 2008, Omnitel released iPhones in Lithuania.
On November 7, 2008, T-Mobile released iPhones in Croatia.
On September 30, 2010, Elisa released the iPhone 4 in Finland.
Read more about this topic: History Of The I Phone
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