Our sister site, Techcrunch France, received some extremely juicy info about the European iPhone. The Francophone version will launch on September 29, 2007 at the Apple Expo in Paris. It will cost 300 Euros plus subscription and it will run on exclusively (*cough*) on Orange France. It is essentially the same as the U.S. version of the iPhone and here’s a bit of news that might sour our excitement about the UK launch – there will be no 3G on this model and there will be no unlimited data plan available, which could make this a fairly expensive proposition. More info as we get it.
UPDATE – Checking with my source on this. The Expo is actually in September, so this might have been a mistranslation.
UPDATE – OK. The announcement will be at the Expo and the launch will be on November 29, 2007. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I don’t get it. Why is Orange offering the iPhone without an unlimited data plan but most of the cool aplications rely on external data that is being loaded over the air.
Or is this a way of making more money by the network operators? It might also help them accept the fact that Apple wants a share of the revenue that the operators make by the use of the iPhone.
Or are the data plans this expensive in France??
Orange in France are specialists in offering the worst deal, normally hidden behind a bargain headline price valid for the first three months. Apple’s deal with the operators takes competition away from us poor consumers.
I would happily pay extra for an unlocked iPhone and run it on a competitors network, even if the voicemail menu would not work.
So wait – not only do we get the iPhone months later than the US, but it’s not even updated to 3G, it’s not larger capacity and it’s not coming out for another two and a half months? If it’s the same phone, why did we have to wait so long?
Screw this and screw Apple.
Unfortunately, not very surprising in fact. This version of the iPhone has always be announced as non-3G, hasn’t it ? The 3G version should be released only during Q1 2008.
About the data plan : Orange (in France, dunno how it is in other countries) proposes awfully high prices for data connections and in no way unlimited plans. Being the leader (that’s why Apple chose him, like O2 in UK or ATT in the USA) the other operators follow him and don’t propose anything at all either. Only Ten Mobile (virtual operator, funnily on the Orange network) has an interesting offer of unlimited internet with selected phones.
In a word : screw this iPhone and all this buzz !! I’m probably gonna buy an iPod touch and be more happy.