European iPhone carriers revealed

According to a report from The Financial Times, T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and O2 in the U.K. have each inked exclusive deals with Apple for the iPhone. What's more, the deals see the carriers paying Apple 10 percent of the revenue made from the calls and data transfers from all iPhones. While none of the carriers would comment on the report, the newspaper's sources claim that the carriers will officially announce their deals with Apple at the IFA trade fair in Berlin at the end of the month.

Given that this is exactly in line with the rumors we've been hearing since July, this is pretty much a sealed deal at this point. Vodafone allegedly had their chance to ink a EU-wide deal with Apple but balked at the "10 percent" proposition--not surprising, given that it's completely unprecedented for a wireless carrier to make that sort of concession to a handset vendor. Still, we've seen Apple play hard ball with industry heavyweights before and while I'll stop short of suggesting that this could be a defining deal for the industry like the iTunes pricing structure was, I will say that this is definitely going to shake things up a bit. No word yet on pricing or a launch date, though if the previous rumors can be believed, we're looking at about £300/€450 sometime in November.

For more on the report:
- read this article from the FT