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Wired: Apple Pushing for iPhone Subsidies in France

Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 4:50 PM - by

Apple is pushing Orange in France to subsidize the iPhone because of poor sales to date, according to the French newspaper Les Echos and reported by Wired on Monday. It may be that French mobile phone buyers, accustomed to cheap phones, just haven't warmed up to Apple's pricing.

The newspaper's sources claim that there is considerable pressure from Apple to follow in the footsteps of the UK and Germany to provide more flexible pricing. Currently, Orange is only selling an estimated 825 iPhones per day.

Wired's Charlie Correl surmised that Apple might have to forgo the monthly revenue sharing in order to get Orange to adopt the new business model. It may be that Apple is slowly realizing the realities of the mobile phone business in Europe and is moving to a more flexible model that allows customers either to pay full price for an unlocked phone with any carrier or obtain a subsidized phone and be locked into a single carrier.

Rumors are also surfacing that Apple is agreeable to a new business model in Italy, where according to la Repubblica no revenue sharing or long-term exclusivity will be required.

Earlier reports have suggested that China is adamantly against revenue sharing as well. In the end, flexibility by Apple is likely to sell more phones, and that appears to be exactly the course the company has been taking lately.

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