O2 To Offer A 40 Percent Revenue Share For iPhone?

From our sister site MocoNews (see full post), a glut of coverage as the iPhone heads to these shores…

UK iPhone: O2 (TEF.MC) has tied up a UK iPhone deal and is going to give Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) a whopping 40 percent of all mobile services revenues made from the handset, The Guardian reports. That’s on top of any margin O2 has agreed to cough up from the device itself. A further cut will go to Carphone Warehouse, which will become the exclusive independent high street retailer (other than O2’s own stores), the report goes. More details are expected at the press conference at London’s Apple Store on Tuesday.

Europe: The Guardian reports Apple has played all mobile operators off each other and has specifically sought national deals as a way of increasing its bargaining position: “Orange (FTE.PA) and T-Mobile (DTE.DE) are understood to have signed contracts [in France and Germany respectively] and at least one had Apple employees helping to implement the device on their networks. But at the eleventh hour O2 snatched the UK deal with an offer that gave such a high proportion of revenues to Apple that none of its competitors could see any way of making any return on the phone, even over three years.TechCrunch France is reporting that the iPhone in France will be selling at a EUR 300 (£205.58) price point, with no unlimited data plan, and no 3G access. The French iPhone product is due to launch at the end of November and will be announced later this week at the Apple Expo in Paris.

O2’s strategy: O2 CEO Peter Erskine last week said that, even with revenue sharing in place, an iPhone deal would be to any operator’s advantage. But also remember that, while O2 has made some very successful plays in the mobile data space (O2 Active is one of the top mobile data portals in terms of usage in the UK), it has also been host to some costly failures, such as trying to launch i-mode. It’s unclear how this launch will tally with O2’s other custom-designed music phone called the Cocoon, which they expected to launch around now. Still, even if Apple has tried to “divide and conquer,” linking up with a Telefonica-owned company could have other advantages for Apple when it takes its product into Spain and significantly Latin America, where Telefonica is an active wireless player.

iPods: The Independent has a piece about the incipient European launch of the iPhone, noting that carriers are less than pleased the iPod Touch will be available before Christmas. Perhaps it’s significant that the carrier quoted in the story, O2, doesn’t believe the iPod touch will damage demand for the iPhone.

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