The European mobile network operator Vodafone unveiled on Tuesday it had signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone on 10 of its markets around the globe, but without giving any specific details on the deal, except that customers should be expecting the iPhone by the end of the year.

Who are the lucky ones? “Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.”There you go!

It’s been almost a year since Apple introduced the mighty multimedia “does-it-all” phone in the United States (unfortunately for the rest of the world, they had to wait longer to get their hands on an iPhone, or just unlock one if they didn’t want to wait).

The iPhone became available in the United Kingdom, Germany and France as of November 2007, and reached Ireland and Austria as of March 2008.

Apple has been criticized for its strategy to slowly introduce the iPhone on other markets around the world, especially considering the high demand at the time (the iPhone was considered to be “the best invention” of 2007).

The consequences of such a strategy came to light earlier this year, when Apple’s statistics of sold iPhones didn’t match statistics of official carriers; “if Apple doesn’t want to give the iPhone, we’ll get it ourselves” seems to have been the motto of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, who became the proud owners of some unlocked iPhones.