iPhones Coming To Orange By December

Orange will start selling the iPhone to British customers in just over two weeks, triggering a two-horse race for customers in the run-up to Christmas.

The mobile phone company announced last month that it had become the first UK network to prise open O2's exclusive grasp on the device, which has helped the company maintain its place as the UK's largest operator.

Orange is understood to be planning to launch the iPhone on 10 November, the day after O2's two-year exclusive contract with Apple comes to an end. It will be sold through the company's own shops and Phones4U .

Carphone Warehouse, which was the only independent retailer able to stock the iPhone when O2 had it to itself, is also expected to sell the phone on behalf of Orange. Orange refused to comment.

The date that Orange has picked to start selling the phone is the same day that Vodafone will announce its half year results. Management at the company has made no secret over the past few months that it wanted to get its hands on the iPhone. Although it has spawned a host of copycat devices, it is still seen as the best touchscreen phone in the market, winning a clutch of industry awards.

When Orange announced it had managed to sign a deal with Apple, Vodafone moved quickly to sign its own deal with the Californian company but will not get its hands on launch its the iPhone handset until the start of the new year. Instead it will rely on the new Blackberry Storm 2, But the merger timetable has been threatened by the government's recent decision to ask the competition authorities to look at the impact of the deal on the UK's airwaves. As a result, T-Mobile may have to go it alone with the iPhone for most of next year.

Kevin Russell, chief executive of the UK's smallest network, 3, said last week he expects to be stocking the device sometime next year.

"I would expect the iPhone to be on the 3 network sometime during 2010," he told a Westminster eForum event in London. "At the moment, we don't have the iPhone. We don't really have any smartphones but if we improve our range of smartphones and introduce the iPhone then our data traffic will grow massively."

Certainly interest in the iPhone among UK consumers shows no signs of abating. Already Orange has had over 200,000 customers register their interest in getting the device, before the company has even said what it will charge for it.

There is hope that having more than one network offer the device will lead to a Christmas price war. But Orange UK boss Tom Alexander told the Guardian after signing the deal that the company is more likely to look at other ways of increasing "value", such as including accessories and even pre-loading certain applications.

Source: guardian.co

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