U.K.

Finally, the real iPhone

There's a theory favored by savvy Apple watchers that the first generation iPhone -- greeted with such hoopla last year -- was not actually the real thing.

That iPhone -- the one that hundreds of thousands of Americans queued up to buy for up to $599 apiece, the one that Time magazine named the Invention of the Year, the one that six million people purchased before Apple finally stopped making them in MORE

The iPhone in Hong Kong: A bargain at $24 a month

Even as Canada's Rogers Communications and Germany's T-Mobile compete to offer the worst voice and data plans for the iPhone 3G, Hutchison Global Communications on Monday unveiled what may be the best.

Hutchison (HTX), which stuck a deal with Apple (AAPL) in May to bring the iPhone to Hong Kong and Macau, will be offering customers a choice of two pricing plans:

8GB iPhone for HK$2,938 ($377) plus HK$188 per month ($24/month) MORE

iPhone 3G pricing: U.S. $199, Germany 1 euro, U.K. free

Last week, Steve Jobs announced that in "almost every one" of the 22 countries selling the iPhone 3G on July 11, the maximum price in would be $199 for the 8G model.

AT&T (T) went with the maximum. Some of Apple's (AAPL) international partners are going with the minimum or close to it.

O2 (TEF), which carries the phone in the U.K., announced last week that the iPhone would be free for MORE

iPhone: European fire sales spreading to France

Hard on the heels of a 75% price cut in Germany and 100 pounds (37%) off in the U.K. comes a report out of Paris that two high-level executives at Orange, the iPhone's wireless carrier in France, have flown to Cupertino to figure out what to do about the excess inventory piling up on their shelves.

Under a headline that reads "L'échec de l'iPhone pousse Orange et Apple à renégocier" ("The MORE

iPhone price cut 37% in U.K. as Apple clears way for 3G model

Two weeks after T-Mobile slashed the price of the 8 GB iPhone in Germany, Britain's Carphone Warehouse and 02 on Wednesday knocked 100 pounds of the price of the device in England, a 37% reduction. The iPhone that sells in the U.S. for $399 now costs (including VAT) $330 in the U.K. and $155 in Germany. Both promotions will end in June.

Meanwhile, U.S. supplies of the iPhone remain tight. Piper MORE

Apple briefs: Beatles '08, roadmap video, BBC iPlayer on iPhone U.K.

Catching up on late week Apple (AAPL) news...

Beatles on iTunes in 2008. We've heard stories like it before, but this one has a twist. The London Evening Standard reported Saturday that Paul McCartney, who is said to be worth more than $1.65 billion, will begin releasing the Beatles catalog on iTunes in the coming months to help defray the $40 to $60 million it may cost him to get MORE

Fuzzy Math: How many iPhones did Europeans buy?

End-of-year sales figures for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone in Europe are trickling in, but not in any form that can be definitively pieced together.

That latest news comes from Germany, where the head of Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile division said in an online interview Saturday that it had signed on 70,000 customers in the 11 weeks since the device went on sale. (link)

What's not clear is whether that number represents iPhone sales or MORE

British iPhone insurance scam

Employees at Carphone Warehouse, the U.K.'s largest cellphone retailer and the main distributor of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone in Britain, have been caught trying to mislead customers about what is and isn't covered by the purchase agreement, according to the BBC.

Responding to viewer complaints, undercover researchers from BBC One's Watchdog unit visited five Carphone Warehouse stores. In three out of the five, a salesperson told BBC staffers posing as customers that MORE

Signal trouble: British iPhone mystery

Is O2's network to blame, or Apple's (AAPL) iPhone?

That's the question posed by more than a few British iPhone owners who purchased the device in the past two weeks and have been struggling ever since to get decent telephone reception on it.

The problem surfaced two days after the phone went on sale in the U.K. when "Matlock" in Derbyshire started a discussion thread on Apple's support board entitled "UK 02 MORE

Brits snapped up Apple iPhones

Britons snapped up Apple (AAPL) iPhones at a healthy clip over the weekend, according to sales estimates that appeared in the British press this morning.

The Guardian and The Times quote Peter Erskine, CEO of O2 UK, estimating that "tens of thousands" of the devices were sold at Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores over the weekend. The Mirror, citing an unnamed O2 spokesperson, put the number at 70,000, according MORE