May 22, 2009 10:08 AM PDT

Orange sells 1 million iPhones in France

by Jim Dalrymple
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Orange, Apple's wireless partner in France, on Friday said it had sold its first million iPhones in that country.

Apple and Orange began selling iPhones in France in late-November 2007. The 1 million iPhone milestone is an important goal for the carrier and Apple's international market, pointing to the success of the device in countries other than the U.S.

In its second fiscal quarter, Apple reported selling 3.79 million iPhones. The company doesn't break out sales by country, so there is no way to tell what percentage were sold in the U.S. or any other country. The quarter's iPhone sales represented a 123 percent unit growth over the same period last year.

To celebrate selling 1 million iPhones, Orange is offering its users unlimited viewing via the Roland-Garros iPhone application to all customers with an iPhone plan. Using the app, users get live coverage from the French Open tennis tournament.

While Orange was selected as Apple's exclusive carrier in France, the country's competition council ordered Apple to open the iPhone to other carriers in December 2008.

Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple.
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by Mark_Anderson May 22, 2009 4:50 PM PDT
So what you're saying is that in 18 months Orange managed to sell 1 million iPhones in France whereas Nokia shifted the same number of N95's in nine months. Oh yeah, and that's without bundling two different versions of a phone together to do it.

Awesome.
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by wes2706404 May 25, 2009 5:22 PM PDT
Hey Mark Anderson, First of all the iPhone is really new, Second the iPhone is like $500, and Third Rogers, Telus, Bell, Nokia etc. are pretty popular as were like no one knows what Orange is. So for france it's pretty nice. And I don't see you writing an article bud so your in no position to be insulting this article.
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by Mark_Anderson May 26, 2009 1:55 PM PDT
Thanks, wes!

A few things...

1) There's a reply button.
2) The N95 was new when it was released.
3) The N95 cost about the same.
4) Orange are a big European network.

No-one really cares about the iPhone that much in Europe. It's a nice phone but there's loads of those.
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