Orange stores stayed open late Wednesday night to kick off the sale of locked and unlocked iPhones. As unlocked devices, the iPhone can connect to carriers other than Orange, a unit of France Telecom. Didier Lombard, France Telecom CEO, had promised earlier this week that Orange's unlocked price would be lower than the unlocked price T-Mobile is charging in Germany -- about $1,471.

Court Decision in Germany

When locked to a service plan, the purchase price in France is $589. Orange will unlock any iPhone that has been purchased with a 12- or 24-month contract for $148 more during the first six months. After that, French law stipulates that unlocking be done for free.

The carriers have not been unlocking the phones out of choice. In Germany, a court had ruled in favor of Vodafone Group PLC, which had sued to demand that T-Mobile open the iPhone to other service providers. The suit was based on a German law prohibiting retailers from requiring consumers to buy one product in order to get another.

In France, carriers are required by law to offer unlocked phones. In the UK, where O2 launched the iPhone, the device is still sold locked.

In the U.S., the number of iPhones that have been unlocked by hacking might amount to more than early estimates. According to news reports, Apple executives said last month that about 250,000 of the 1.4 million iPhones sold in the U.S. have not yet been registered with the only official carrier, AT&T .

But that proportion of unlocked phones is low compared to Orange's breakdown. Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, said that as many as 60 percent of Orange's subscribers use unlocked phones. He noted that the carrier waited until the last minute to reveal the pricing details for an unlocked iPhone.

Era of Unlocked Phones?

A big difference between the iPhone's reception in Europe and in the U.S., Hazelton said, is that smartphones are used primarily by consumers there, but primarily by business users here. He added that this means "there is a wider variety of smartphones for consumers there," which could reduce the impact of the iPhone in that region.

In the U.S., the era of unlocked phones might not be here, but there are a few developments that might lead the way. Verizon Wireless, for instance, announced on Tuesday that it would open its wireless network to third-party devices and applications toward the end of 2008.

Hazelton noted that Verizon's announcement comes just before the auction by the Federal Communications Commission in January. Recently adopted FCC rules require that a portion of the auctioned frequencies be available to any device or nonmalicious software, and Hazelton said that Verizon was positioning itself for that auction.

However, he noted, the situation is still dissimilar from Europe's, in that Verizon's services will not be available to the unlocked devices, and a whole new ecosystem of services and applications will have to develop here to support unlocked devices.