Orange announces multi-country iPhone deal

Orange announced today it will carry the iPhone in several countries in addition to France.

The France-Telecom owned mobile operator has agreed with Apple to distribute the iPhone in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland as well as its African markets.

It said the device will be available from Orange in those countries later this year without providing further details on the deal.

Orange also confirmed that for some countries such as Austria, Switzerland Portugal its deal is co-exclusive with other operators. It however re-iterated previous claims that it will remain the only operator to carry the iPhone in France at least for the next two years.

During the last few weeks, telecom operators across the world announced their deals to carry the iPhone in their respective markets, making the device potentially available worldwide by the the end of this year. Still awaited are deals in the Asian markets.

Meanwhile, yesterday T-Mobile announced it has sold 100 000 iPhones in Germany so far. Though they claim to have hit their target, the numbers do not sound good but could significantly improve with the launch of the 3G version.