Mannerisms

At the same time, Telecom TIM Telecom Italia Mobile the biggest wireless network in Italy, said it will also sell the iPhone in Italy. So Apple will have competing Italian vendors, Vodafone and Telecom Italia, which is a change from Apple's single-vendor-per-country strategy when it launched the iPhone into Europe last year.

The speculation is that these new sales agreements relate to the new, 3G-capable iPhone, but neither Apple, nor Vodafone, will say whether the iPhone covered by these agreements is, in fact, the 3G iPhone.

So, I asked Vodafone: "Is it the old GSM/GPRS iPhone? “It is an iPhone device”, replied a Vodafone spokesperson.

Does that mean it could be an old-style GSM/GPRS phone, but that it might be the new 3GiPhone, but, there again, it might be something else?

“I can’t say,” replied the spokesman.

Asked if the list of countries mentioned is a definitive list, or is a list that could be added to, the spokesman replied: “Neither, Nor”.

So there we are. Apple’s publicity blanket seems to have been imposed once again.

Apple has still not revealed the European sales numbers of the old-style GSM/GPRS iPhone which was launched last year in Europe.

According to Guy Kewney’s Mobile Campaign, quoting ‘sources available to French publication Les Echoes', Orange "has sold only 100,000 units since the November launch, while at the end of January T-Mobile sold 70,000 iPhones in Germany. In UK, Telefonica’s O2 managed to sell 200,000 units."

So Apple seems to have a flop on its hands. The word is, that the Cupertino marketing genii, have figured out that Europeans go on holiday in August, therefore European holidaymakers would like a good communications device during August, therefore it would be a good idea to get the 3G iPhone into European markets before August.

Don’t they know that Europeans don’t go on holiday to communicate via portable devices, but in order to lie around stinking of drink?