La Repubblica claims that Franco Benabe met with Jobs at Apple’s headquarters in March to finalize an agreement regarding the iPhone distribution in Italy. As the newspaper noted, the negotiations between Apple and Telecom Italia were started initially by Luca Luciani, Chief Operating Officer, TIM.

Apparently, the agreement stipulates that Apple will sell in Italy directly the 3G iPhone. But there’s more! La Repubblica also claims that the Cupertino company agreed to drop its famous revenue sharing model. Instead, the price of the iPhone will be higher than in other European countries, but no other details were given.

Also the deal is not exclusive, which means that after six months Apple may distribute its iPhone through other Italian mobile operators as well. Vodafone Italy and 3 were named in the article as potential distributors.

The Italian newspaper noted that it seemed like a strange agreement, but the author of the article had some explanations for Jobs’ sudden change of mind.

The increased pressure from the mobile makers like Nokia, Samsung and HTC, Italy's high uptake of 3G (44 percent compared to only 20 percent in France, 18 percent in UK and 15 percent in Spain), and the evolving mobile market were quoted as the reasons behind this, let ‘s say it, odd agreement.

The new report emerges after earlier this month T-Mobile and O2 have slashed the price of the 8GB iPhone. In addition, last Friday, the French newspaper Les Echos reported that Apple and Orange were negotiating a subsidized pricing scheme for iPhone.

In my humble opinion, I found it hard to believe that Apple was ready to change its distribution model so radically, but maybe indeed La Repubblica knows something more than the rest of us, even though no official sources, anonymous or otherwise, were mentioned. After all, everything is possible.