Vodafone's German subsidiary has won an interim court injunction against Deutsche Telekom which may prevent its T-Mobile subsidiary selling the Apple iPhone during the lucrative Christmas shopping period.
The injunction forbid's T-Mobile from selling the device exclusively with two-year contracts or with software that only works with its network.
T-Mobile, Germany's largest mobile operator with over 34 million customers, said it would appeal the injunction granted by the regional court of Hamburg on November 12th. T-Mobile is the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in Germany and started selling the combined phone, iPod music player and internet access device on November 9th.
It is the latest indication that Apple's model of adopting an exclusive network partner may not fly in Europe.
The iPhone goes in sale in France on Thursday week, November 29th, through Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom, priced at €399. In order to comply with French consumer law, Apple will have to make a version available that will work with other networks, although no details of the price or availability of this version have been released.
Vodafone contends that Deutsche Telekom's sale of the iPhone with software making it impossible to switch to another provider is the first effort to technically bind customers to one company.
It is claiming that under German law a phone can only be locked to a network if the operator has also subsidised the cost of the handset. A Vodafone spokesman said it would not take take similar legal actions in France and the UK as consumer law is different.
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