The iPhone market is continuously expanding, as France Telecom’s wireless subsidiary Orange announced today its plan to distribute the phone in Europe, Africa and also in the Middle East.

Orange did not want to give out too many details but agreed to present the countries that will take part in the distribution deal, mentioning Belgium, Egypt, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Slovakia and also some of the interested African markets, which include Senegal, Cameroon, Botswana, Madagascar, Mali, Reunion, Kenya and Mauritius.

Even though the device is very popular and surely will attract the customers, a series of features or better said, a series of missing features might affect the end result. It is a well known fact that iPhone users must listen and download their music through iTunes while all other phones simply allow music files to be copied onto the memory card as if it were a USB memory drive.

Another issue regards the iPhone’s high-end photo camera which does not include a flash light, as many new phones now offer. Some of the phones are even better than a large number of photo cameras. According to PCWorld, for the majority of Egyptians, a good photo camera is much more important than the Easy Internet access, offered by the iPhone.

One of the new destinations, the African area, was also considered a risky investment as the phone’s price is rather high and people might not be able to afford the device.

So far, France Telecom registers more than 172 million customers spread on five continents, two thirds of them being Orange customers.