France will now have contract-less iPhones after a furor about the original exclusive tie-up with telco Orange. Unfortunately it comes with a literally hefty price, as the iPhone is now retailing for prices in excess of 800 euros or around $1200 dollars.

Wired went through French retailer FNAC’s site so we didn’t have to, and found little more than price and specifications. FNAC is selling the 8GB version for 800 euros ($1,120) while the16GB goes for a rather painful 899 euros ($1,261). Only 2 weeks ago, French telecom regulator called the Orange deal to sell the iPhone in France anti-competitive, this followed a complaint from another telco, Bouygues Telecom.  Originally, the phone was supposed to be exclusively available only from Orange.

Orange attempted to get past France’s anti-competitive laws that prohibited exclusivity or locking the hardware to specific networks via ingenious caveats. It sold unlockable handsets for 649 euros, with a charge of 100 euros to unlock it…which would be waived after 6 months. Nifty, though Bouygues Telecom still cried foul. FNAC’s prices aren’t all that attractive, though and it remains to be seen if other operators attempt to subsidize the phones for lower costs.

But how long can Apple continue to wangle difficult telco deals in other countries? But perhaps in the bigger scheme of things, it’s not so much about the telcos as to locking users into the App Store. Having different policies in different countries might perhaps help it adapt to different climes, and as is obvious in countries like Korea and Japan, things are far different from the telco lock-ins of the US.

What is going to be certain is that there likely won’t be impressive sales figures in France – but who cares about France when Apple’s pretty much captured a third of the smartphone market, and is the biggest selling mobile phone ever.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 8:54 am under International, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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