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Its T-Mobile division is the exclusive network carrier for the iPhone in Germany, and began selling the phone on 9 November 2007, the same day it went on sale in the UK.

"The iPhone is by far the most sold multimedia device in T-Mobile's portfolio," said Philipp Humm, the head of T-Mobile in Germany, in an interview published on the company's intranet.

After the iPhone went on sale in Germany, rival mobile network Vodafone managed to gain a temporary injunction against the company, preventing it from selling the iPhone only when bundled with one

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of its airtime contracts. This led Deutsche Telekom for a brief period until the injunction was overturned.

Apple reported in a recent financial filing that it had sold four million iPhones overall since the launch at the end of June 2007, including around 200,000 in the UK out of an estimated European total of 350,000. That leaves it needing to shift a further six million to meet its target of 10 million by the end of this year.

To this end Apple needs to be selling the handset in more than just four countries, though its own demands are not making it easy to reach agreements. Operators appear to be baulking at the revenue sharing model that Apple and its network partners have adopted in the UK, US, France and Germany. And is some countries, notably Belgium and Finland, local laws ban the sale of phones with contracts. Belgium's Le Soir newspaper reported last week that negotiations between the country's mobile operators and Apple have broken down after failing to find a way around this restriction. MEPs and European Commission regulators are sure to have noticed.