Orange and Vodafone to sell iPhone 3G and 3GS, spelling end of exclusivity for O2

Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone in 28 countries and territories. Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesales channels, as well as selected high street partners. A pre-registration site for customers to log their interest has been launched at www.Orange.co.uk/iPhone.

This signals a major hit for 02, who in recent weeks had reaffirmed their exclusivity as the UK’s iPhone stockist. It will now be interesting to see what impact this has on the UK market share for the Apple handset, because with Android handsets making ground and fast, this could be just the boost the iPhone needs to maintain, if not increase its percentage share of the lucrative British market.

What are your thoughts? Are you an Orange user that is going to drop everything to get your hands on an iPhone? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: 02 have made a statement (taken from the 02 blog)

We’re proud that we’ve been able to offer an exclusive iPhone deal to our 20 million customers for the last two years. We always knew that iPhone exclusivity was for a limited period of time, but our relationship with Apple continues and will be an ongoing success. We have over 1million iPhone customers and they remain very important to us.

We aim to offer our customers the best devices on the market, including becoming the home of Smartphones and we are really pleased to now add another device in the Palm Pre. We also offer award-winning customer service and benefits, which is why more people choose O2 than any other network in the UK.

Update 2: Vodafone have now announced that they are set to also offer the iPhone 3G and 3GS too!