With an Apple press conference taking place in London tomorrow, new details are emerging about which mobile operators have bagged the exclusive rights to offer the iPhone across the pond.

Although previous reports speculated the Cupertino-based company had succeeded in committing European carriers to hand over 10 percent of iPhone revenues derived from phone calls and data functions, The Guardian is now reporting that O2 has agreed to pay Apple a shocking 40 percent of voice and data revenues from iPhone customers, snatching the device away from Orange and T-Mobile in the UK – although elsewhere in Europe T-Mobile and Orange appear to have secured the rights to sell the iPhone.

Apple's negotiating techniques have been called into question in The Guardian’s report. Apparently, Steve Jobs played the four major European network operators against each other, signing exclusive deals for the British market with three of them only to extract the “money-losing” terms from O2 at the last minute.