It appears that because of French law, the iPhone will go on sale in France in two version. One will be locked to Orange France and will be sold for €399, the other will be sold unlocked, presumably for a higher price. But despite the higher price this opens interesting opportunities, especially with the EU laws in place against restrictions on trade and commerce between E.U. member countries. For instance if I boughht an unlocked iPhone in France there is no legal way for Apple to put technical restrictions on my use of it in the UK, or other EU member countries. So no locking it to the French iTunes store, or restricting it to French language only. That isn't legal... interesting no?
Update: Just to clarify. Under French law the network must unlock a phone if requested to do so, free of charge, as soon as the customer has owned the phone for more than 6 month. So even the locked version won't stay locked for long.
I take pride in the concept of "America" but the cellular market is one where I believe Europe has the rest of the world beat.
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