Following reports that the two companies were in talks, Orange has now officially announced that an agreement has been reached over extending its geographical distribution of the iPhone.

Orange, that currently offers the iPhone as the exclusive operator partner for the Apple mobile in France, will also sell - presumably the 3G iPhone - in a large list of countries.

In a brief statement on their site, the telecoms co says: "Orange today announced a new agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Orange customers in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange’s African markets later this year".

Swisscom has also secured the iPhone for Switzerland, so this marks another territory where Apple is dropping its previous exclusive operator business model.

This follows the news that multi-operator deals have been announced for Singapore, India and the Phillipines, Vodafone is to offer the iPhone in ten countries and America Movil will do likewise across around 16 Latin American markets.

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