French cell phone carrier Orange is reportedly “satisfied” with December iPhone sales that hit 210,000 – triple the 70,000 handsets the France Telecom-owned company sold during the same period in 2007.
The news comes from French newspaper La Tribune, which quoted unnamed sources within Orange and SFR. If true, the iPhone sales would appear to counter worries that a recent French competition decision would dilute the cell phone market.
France’s competition body recently temporarily ruled against Orange’s exclusive iPhone deal, permitting rival Bouygues to also offer the Apple handset.
In 2007, France ordered the iPhone must be sold ‘unlocked,’ however only Orange sold the phone.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
