While Apple has found a willing partner in AT&T (Monopoly MkII in the making) in the States, the much healthier (and far more advanced) European market finds many of the company’s demands unacceptable. A retail-only iPhone in Europe seems like a possibility for Apple, if no operator concedes. This will increase the device’s price, but it’ll probably mean an unlocked phone too; the fact that the iPhone is the archetypal ‘form over function’ Apple product and the fact that the competition in high-end phones is much more intense in Europe than it is in the U.S. is possibly going to limit how expensive the iPhone can get. And that, it seems to me, is A Good Thing.
