End of carrier exclusivity leads to iPhone price war in France

John Brownlee ()

End of carrier exclusivity leads to iPhone price war in France

An iPhone price war currently underway in France may be our first glimpse of what we can expect if, as rumored, AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple runs out next year, and the iPhone comes to other carriers.

Earlier this year, Orange’s exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in France was overturned by a court decision from the Competition Counsel, in response to a complaint by Bouygues Telecom. That decision allowed the iPhone to pop up on any carrier that could handle it, and ever since, Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR have been slashing the prices of their iPhones to keep up with one another. What this means is that, in France, you can pick up an iPhone on a €40 a month contract for as little as €19.

DON'T MISS
France: Apple Must Hang Up On Exclusive iPhone Deal

This is largely a win for everyone except Orange. Consumers get cheap iPhones. Bouygues and SFR get to take their cut from the iPhone pie. And Apple enjoys an explosive sales surge. AT&T’s death grip on the iPhone just can’t end soon enough.

5 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in iPhone, News |

  • Fred A.

    Here in France a provider even proposed the 3G 8Go model at 1 EUR !!
    iPhones 3GS can be found at 39 / 59 EUR during the holiday season, but you need to take a 2-year subscription …

    But the real price war will begin when new mobile provider ‘Free’ will develop its network. They changed the whole Internet market here cause they were the first to propose triple-play offers (Telephone, TV, internet, unlimited for 30 EUR).
    They just got the license to develop a mobile offer, which shouldn’t be ready before 2011, but then it’s really gonna rock !

  • http://habit47.com habit47
  • Ben

    Here in Canada it did not change nothing, we are still paying a max compare to U.S.

  • Paul

    It’s a shame similar pricing wars haven’t been the norm here in Canada.

    Of course this is the same place (well, at least in Toronto) that can’t even prevent all the gas stations from selling gas at the same over-inflated price. Too bad.

  • Jamie

    Much the same here in the UK; O2 carried iPhone since November ’07. From November this year Orange have joined the game, followed by Vodafone from January ’10. No price war has broken out here.
    The nearest we’ve got is Tesco mobile (virtual carrier on O2) having a very low monthly charge (£20 if memory serves), but you pay up front for the phone.