French newspaper Les Echos reports the relationship between Apple and Orange is not going smoothly. While there is a suggestion that Apple CEO Steve Jobs took offence when Lombard made the announcement without him, a bigger stumbling block seems to be a French law that prohibits any requirement that a product and a service are purchased together. This threatens Apple's plans for a single iPhone carrier in each geography.
Though Vodafone missed out on the first three European iPhone deals, its CEO Arun Sarin believes that his company will "absolutely" be in with a shout of negotiating an opportunity with Apple over the next six to twelve months.
A couple of months ago, Sarin spoke out over the lack of 3G in the iPhone, and that's still very much the line they're taking, with Sarin telling investors and analysts that Vodafone were looking forward to a faster iPhone from Apple.
Apple's response to iPhone unlocking tools has been to release a statement that unlocking an iPhone may make it "permanently inoperable" if future iPhone software updates are installed on it. The news comes as little surprise after Steve Jobs referred to dealing with iPhone unlock hacks as a "constant cat and mouse game" in which Apple will continually attempt to thwart users who want to use the device with a carrier other than those it has signed partnerships with (currently AT&T in the US, O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany, and Orange in France).
A peek inside reveals this gadget owes much to funding sourced outside the US
While the US technology group last week signed up its European distribution partners for the phone, which sold its millionth unit in the US this month, local venture capitalists were crowing about their involvement in seeding companies that formed the backbone of the wireless technology and hope it will kick-start recovery in the financing sector, which struggled after the dotcom bubble burst.
The launch of Apple’s iPhone has revealed a surprising secret – European technology and its venture capital backers have been central to the new phone’s success. And this success underlines the surprisingly healthy state of the European venture capital industry.