France Telecom confirms talks with Apple on iPhone

PARIS, Aug 24 (Reuters) - France Telecom (FTE.PA) confirmed on Friday it was in talks with U.S. group Apple Inc (AAPL.O) over marketing the latter's iPhone but said there was no deal yet.

"I can confirm there are talks," said a France Telecom spokeswoman.

Earlier this week, the Financial Times Deutschland reported that Deutsche Telekom AG's (DTEGn.DE) mobile phone unit, T-Mobile, had agreed to a deal in which, in order to sell the iPhone, it would share with Apple 10 percent of the revenue it makes from calls and data transfers by customers over iPhones.

The FT Deutschland added that France Telecom's Orange unit and the O2 unit of Spain's Telefonica (TEF.MC) had also agreed to the terms for deals in their countries. Louis-Pierre Wenes, a senior executive at France Telecom, told Paris Match in an article published on Thursday that any announcement of a deal might be several weeks away.

"Several operators are still in talks with Apple. I think it will be several weeks before we have an announcement. A deal in September, as has been reported, seems impossible to me, if only for technical reasons," he told Paris Match.

((Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, editing by David Holmes; Reuters Messaging: sudip.kargupta.reuters.com@reuters.net; +33 1 49 49 52 26)) Keywords: ORANGE IPHONE/

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