Apple picks up pace on nonexclusive iPhone deals

Computerworld - The French mobile carrier Orange today said it has signed agreements with Apple Inc. to sell the iPhone in more than 10 European, Middle Eastern and African countries -- and in the process it extended the move toward inking nonexclusive deals for the device.

Orange, which was tapped by Apple as its exclusive carrier partner in France last year, will also sell the iPhone in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and the company's African markets, it said in a terse statement released today.

As with similar announcements by the likes of Italy's Telecom Italia and U.K.-based Vodafone, Orange was vague on the timetable, saying only that it would begin marketing the iPhone in those countries "later this year."

Several of the nations named by Orange already have an Apple-assigned service provider set to sell the iPhone, including Austria (where T-Mobile started selling the smart phone in March), the Dominican Republic (Mexico-based America Movil has a deal there, too), Egypt (Vodafone) and Portugal (Vodafone).

Apple first departed from its one-carrier-per-country business model last week when Vodafone and Telecom Italia -- Italy's largest telecommunications company -- both said that they had signed deals with the U.S. computer and consumer electronics maker to sell the iPhone in Italy. Until then, Apple had partnered with a single mobile service provider in each market. In the U.S., for example, the only authorized network is AT&T Inc., while in France, Germany and the U.K. it's Orange, T-Mobile and O2, respectively.

Those earlier arrangements have given Apple a portion of the subscriber fees paid by iPhone owners. It's unknown, however, whether the nonexclusive deals include revenue sharing; Apple and the mobile service providers have not disclosed financial terms of their agreements.

In other news, speculation that the release of a next-generation iPhone is imminent has been fueled by out-of-stock messages posted on Apple's U.S. and U.K. online stores, by sales representatives telling customers that the device is sold out "companywide," and by new reports that A&T has restricted purchases to one per customer.

Earlier this week, Apple confirmed that CEO Steve Jobs will kick off the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 9 with a keynote address. Jobs is expected to announce and/or launch a new iPhone capable of connecting to faster 3G data networks during the keynote.