Vodafone snags iPhone for Europe, Asia

If you live in a country that isn't the U.S, the U.K., France, Austria or Germany, you've been waiting quite a while for the arrival of the iPhone. Luckily, Vodafone Europe has just announced that it won the contract to sell the device in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, and will offer the phone "later this year." Hmm.

In related news, an internal AT&T document that leaked this week revealed that AT&T employees will be barred from taking vacation between June 15th and July 12th, due to "an exciting Summer Promotional Launch." As the iPhone die hards in the audience will note, AT&T pulled the same maneuver last year, barring vacations from June 15th to July 15th. So we can only assume that the 3G iPhone's launch will fall somewhere in that window. June 29th, anyone?

For more on the 3G iPhone:
- see this Vodafone press release
- and this Engadget article