Voda Germany blocks iPhone
Rating: Sour grapes, not rotten Apple
By Annie Turner
According to that impeccable source, The Register, Vodafone has won an injunction preventing T-Mobile from selling the iPhone in Germany. T-Mobile is Apple’s exclusive carrier partner in Germany, Europe’s biggest market.
The lawsuit challenges T-Mobile’s exclusivity arrangement with Apple. There’s some confusion about the extent of the injunction - with Dow Jones reporting a total ban on sales as a consequence of the Hamburg court’s decision, while other news services suggest that sales can proceed if the iPhone is available SIM-free.
The head of Vodafone’s in Germany, Friedrich Joussen, claims the action is to defend customers’ rights rather than have a pop at the iPhone: under French law, Orange must offer a SIM-free version of the iPhone alongside one tied to a contract. Yesterday, Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin described the iPhone as "a pretty poor experience.”
All of which is most interesting. At the Mobile Marketing Forum in Barcelona last month. I complained to Richard Saggers, head of advertising, Vodafone Group, that I’d have to change carrier (to O2) because Voda had refused to play ball with Apple. Mr Saggers insisted that this simply wasn’t true and claimed that Vodafone had more than 3,000 unblocked iPhones on its European networks and that there was no problem using them.
I remained skeptical and looks like I was right about Voda’s antipathy to Apple. Vodafone Deutschland’s legal action is more of a fit of pique (and fear of the Apple business model) than about poor user experience.
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