(Property Apple Computer : Apple Store USA )

It has been almost 6 months since the iPhone exploded into the US market. It will now begin invading Europe. As for iTunes Music Store, the ‘fruit company’ decided to roll it out to the rest of the world with the same strategy : exclusive agreement with carrier / provider and exclusive features

O2 has been officially appointed for the UK market, Vodafone for Germany. Orange is expected to be announced soon.

After dropping the price from US$599 to US$399 in USA, Apple had to react quickly by proposing an attractive price for UK. Unfortunately, at 269 pounds proposed price ($569) it will not be able to thwart parallel imports. In Germany, the iPhone will be proposed at399 Euro ($553) for the 8GB version

The market and consumers were expecting Apple to update the iPhone product specifications to include 3G so that it would address European needs. Unfortunately and in my opinion not surprising that Apple did not do so. It would have been unlikely for Apple to change the specifications for a single market as its strategy was to release the product for all markets with same sets of features.

However, it is possible that future models of iPhones to be 3G enabled.

It is also not surprising that Apple decided to have one carrier per country instead of one that covered the whole of European. They are following the same strategy as iTMS, choosing the best carrier in each country. This is definitely not a good news for European consumers who travel regularly between EU nations. Nevertheless, local consumers will still benefit.

It will be interesting to see how Apple prices the iPhone in the rest of the countries. Differentiated pricing in each country will most probably please hackers and parallel importers who will chance on the opportunity to feed the frenzy in the rest of EU.

Links : Macworld