Analyst: Apple deals in Europe or U.K. tough without 3G handset

Speculation has sent network operators’ stock up and down, but a British analyst said yesterday that Apple Inc. had not signed any deals with Euro-operators.
The sticking point, according to Bill Ray, analyst with ARChart and columnist for the online technology daily, The Register, is the iPhone’s lack of 3G.
“There are no standing deals,” Ray said. “My feeling is that you have to announce a 3G deal from the get-go.”
European and U.K. network operators spent billions of dollars on 3G licenses, paid for by investors, and billions more to build out those 3G networks, Ray said. Millions more are being spent deploying HSDPA. In the U.K., for example, offering consumers an EDGE-enabled device is a “non-starter,” he said.
“To turn around and say that EDGE is basically good enough would be something of a slap in the face to the shareholders who are funding those deployments,” Ray said.
Beyond the 3G issue, network operators in Western Europe and the U.K. have had a “running battle” with Nokia Corp. about the power of influential handset vendors over their operator customers. Apple will attempt to strike a deal with Euro-operators similar to its dominant position with AT&T in the United States and that “will be fought,” Ray said.
Ray predicted that an Apple deal with a European operator might take as much as six months to announce.
Earlier this month, various media reported that Apple deals were imminent with T-Mobile in Germany (owned by Deutsche Telekom), with O2 in the U.K. (owned by Telefonica), and/or with Orange (owned by France Telecom). Vodafone Group has been mentioned as a potential Apple partner as well, but the operator’s share price jumped and sagged earlier this month on investors’ hopes, subsequently dashed, that the world’s largest operator had secured a pan-European deal with Apple.