T-Mobile to sell 3G iPhone from €1 in Germany

Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile will sell Apple Inc's new iPhone for as little as €1 for the eight-gigabyte version together with a €69 monthly contract, it said.

Apple is set to reach far more consumers with the launch of the 3G iPhone in 70 countries than it did with the original version a year ago, partly due to having abandoned its insistence that carriers give it a share of call revenue.

Operators such as T-Mobile now have more scope to subsidise the cost of the phone to buyers in return for more lucrative contracts.

Some carriers, including Telefonica's, O2, have said iPhone users consume 30 times as much data as users of other Internet-enabled phones.

The original iPhones that went on sale a year ago cost hundreds of euro and were sold in conjunction with expensive, exclusive deals with a single carrier in each country. Six million of the handsets were sold.

T-Mobile will sell the 3G iPhone with eight gigabytes of memory, enough to store about 2,000 songs or eight feature-length movies, for between one and €169.95, depending on the data plan.

The 16-gigabyte version will start at €19.95 with an all-inclusive data plan costing €89 per month, going up to €249.95 for a minimal €29-per-month contract.