LONDON - Apple Inc. took its million-selling must trans-Atlantic Tuesday, announcing a November rollout in Britain with an eye toward expanding into Europe in coming months, if not days.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said the iPhone will go on sale in Britain Nov. 9 and operate only with mobile operator O2, the first time the 3-month-old, combination cell phone-media player has been sold outside the United States.
Sold through Apple stores, O2 retail outlets and The Carphone Warehouse PLC, the 8-gigabyte model will cost about $536, including the British value-added tax. That's $139 more than its price in the United States. The British iPhone has the same technical specifications as the U.S. model.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and O2 CEO Matthew Key refused to discuss the details of their partnership. British media reports said O2 PLC paid a heavy price, agreeing to share as much as 40 percent of its revenue from customers using the device. It must divide its share further with Carphone Warehouse, the Guardian reported.
Jobs declined to discuss further launches in Europe.
"We've said we'll be in a few countries in Europe next quarter. As we roll those out, I'm sure you'll hear about it," he said
Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG announced a Wednesday news conference in Berlin that Dow Jones Newswires reported would launch the iPhone in Germany.
Rumors have circulated for months that Deutsche Telekom was negotiating to carry the iPhone in Germany through its T-Mobile wireless unit. The likely candidate in Spain is Telefonica SA -- the parent of O2 -- and in France it is thought to be Orange. None of those companies has confirmed holding talks with Apple.
In the U.S., the iPhone has been on sale since June 29, with service exclusively provided by AT&T Inc. Less than a week after cutting the iPhone's price by one-third, Cupertino, California-based Apple announced last week that it had sold 1 million iPhones.
Jobs said Tuesday his target was to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, representing 1 percent of the total handset market. He did not offer assurances Tuesday against future price reductions.
"In technology there's never any guarantees," he said, answering a query about the possibility. "There's always new models of things, there's always price reductions on old models. If you wait to buy something, always looking over the horizon, you'll never buy anything."
O2 is gambling on the iPhone's launch being an event that will allow it to rapidly expand its share of the British market's highest-value subscribers, said Ben Wood, director of CCS Insight, a telecommunication research company. He said O2 "stated today they were prepared to change the business model for this one-time opportunity."
Jobs said the iPhone's ability to play music, TV shows and movies and browse the Web will help it break the mold in a market where consumers are accustomed to network operators providing free or subsidized phones.
But analysts said in the long-term Apple could face a challenge.
"Being asked to pay 270 pounds for a phone, even a very smart phone, will be a culture shock," said Chris Green, editor of IT Pro, a trade magazine. "But given the Apple brand I think they might be able to get it to work."
The O2 contract, at $70 to $100 a month, includes unlimited use of what the operator called Britain's largest public Wi-Fi network. An 18-month contract would cost at least $1,798, including the phone and service.
To protect its business agreements with network partners, Apple sells the iPhone locked so that it won't work on other networks or in other countries. But hackers have already succeeded in unlocking the phones. Jobs said Apple was working on ways to beat the hackers.
Even as Jobs spoke some of the journalists and analysts in the room were already using modified iPhones bought in the U.S. that were operating on networks other than O2.
