Apple announced Wednesday that the phone will launch November 9 in Germany, with T-Mobile as the carrier. The German model will cost 399 euros -- about US$553 -- and require a two-year contract with the carrier.

The phone in both countries has the same specifications as the model launched in the U.S. in June -- including the controversial nonremovable battery. At 270 British pounds, including a British use tax, the phone runs about $536, $137 more than it does in the U.S. now that Jobs has dropped the price here to $399.

Europe as Big as U.S.

"U.S. iPhone customer satisfaction is off the charts, and we cannot wait to let UK customers get their hands on it and learn what they think of it," Jobs said. Similarly, he said in a press release Wednesday, "We can't wait to introduce T-Mobile customers to the most revolutionary mobile device on the planet."

The European launches are big news for Apple, said Ken Dulaney, vice president at Gartner Group. The European market "is big," he said, and is "as important as the U.S. market." As in the U.S., European iPhone users will be using an EDGE network , which is substantially slower than 3G networks. That troubles some potential customers and analysts. At the announcement, Jobs said Apple opted to forego 3G because of the heavy power draw 3G chips make on the handset. O2 committed to covering just 30 percent of the country.

O2 said it expects many users access the Internet via Wi-Fi hotspots. Indeed, "many who buy (iPhones) are using them on Wi-Fi," Dulaney said. O2 "will probably upgrade their network," he added. So far, O2 has cut a deal with The Cloud to offer free Wi-Fi access at 7,000 points across the UK.

While it may be true that urban users can access data from the iPone using Wi-Fi, rural users don't have access to many Wi-Fi connections. Because O2 is offering flat-rate plans that include unlimited Internet access, rural users who can't get onto EDGE or Wi-Fi will be paying for data access they never use.

Access Plans and Unlocking

O2 is offering three flat-rate plans at the equivalent of $70 to $100 a month. T-Mobile has not yet announced pricing plans or whether iPhone customers will have free access to T-Mobile's 8,600 hotspots. According to press reports, T-Mobile will be the chosen carrier in Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Croatia, but the companies have not announced any of those deals.

Jobs announced for the first time that Apple would work to disable the rash of iPhone unlocking programs currently available for sale and for free. "It's a cat-and-mouse game," Jobs said. "We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it's our job to stop them breaking in." Apple would be able to disable the current generation of unlocking programs by updating the phones' firmware.

"What else would you expect him to say?" Dulaney said, noting that he expects few users to mess with unlocking. "While it can be done by a few techies, many users don't want to compromise their phones to unlock them."