Has T-Mobile Won Exclusive Rights for Apple iPhone in Germany?

With the iPhone launched in the United States, potential iPhone customers in the rest of the world are starting to get rowdy and complain about the wait time they are still facing. The device is supposed to arrive in Europe next, but with just a few months to go, details are still very sketchy about which carriers Apple will partner with.

According to a report in the Rheinische Post, Deutsche Telekom's mobile phone unit T-Mobile has landed the deal with Apple to bring the iPhone in Germany. Although there has been no official word from either Apple or Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile, it looks like the deal will be similar to the one made with AT&T for the United States.
T-Mobile is expected to sell the iPhone exclusively with a T-Mobile contract for around �450 euros ($612) starting Nov 1.

Though report from last week spoke of Vodaphone, this latest one implies that Apple will be going with a separate carrier for each European country. This approach would give Apple the flexibility to choose the best carrier in each country, but it would also mean negotiating a great many contracts and working with all those individual carriers to ensure compatibility of iPhone's only services that would have to be implemented. Furthermore, Apple is likely to have a much harder time locking the iPhone to the service in Europe, where devices are expected to be open.

Details are still sketchy about the iPhone in Europe, for not only is there the issue of the carrier that needs to be sorted out, but also that of the device itself, which might see quite a number of changes. The European version of the iPhone is expected to be 3G and also have a modified case so that the camera is on the front, allowing for video calls to be made.