A German court ordered T-Mobile to sell Apple's iPhone to European customers wanting to buy the handset without a service contract. T-Mobile rival Vodafone obtained the Court order, which was handed down from a Hamburg judge and gives T-Mobile two weeks to respond. While reports of the story in German and American media outlets differ somewhat, there is the chance that the order could temporarily halt all iPhone sales in Germany. I doubt it'll come to that, but you never know.
Read more at Appleinsider from here.
Meanwhile, an ironic and most likely way off the mark rumor says that Vodafone will actually have the exclusive rights to the first 3G iPhone in Q1 of 2008. Morse.it, an Italian Website, claims to have confirmed via high-level sources that Vodafone will launch a UMTS iPhone early next year in a deal to be announced after the holidays. While a MacWorld announcement regarding a long-awaited 3G iPhone makes lots of sense, that handset launching on Vodafone makes no sense at all, particularly given their recent crying to a judge over losing the current European iPhone contract to T-Mobile (see above). But like I said, you never know.
Read more about the 3G iPhone for 2008 from unwiredview or an Italian site morse.it.
