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Apple's exclusive UK iPhone partner, Telefonica-owned O2, is widely reported to be preparing to offer subsidized Macbooks along with fixed and/or mobile broadband contracts. Although the operator is denying the rumors, such a move would be in keeping with its recent aggressive progress in offering a wide variety of fixed and mobile connection bundles, and the extremely high profile it has given its Apple handsets.

Just as the iPhone is a differentiator from other carriers, so O2 would score significant marketing points by being the first to put a Mac, rather than a PC, on its books. It is becoming increasingly common for European cellcos to subsidize laptops in order to lure customers to lucrative, data-heavy mobile broadband contracts.

Such arrangements currently focus mainly on low cost 'netbooks' - an emerging category heavily geared to wireless. But as in handsets, it can only be a short time before carriers want to compete on higher end features and brands.

For Apple, though, it would be a major shift in its channel strategy, potentially reducing the perceived price tag and value attached to its Macbooks and creating conflict with existing dealers. Unlike many PC vendors like Dell, there is no indication that Apple is preparing its own low end, wireless netbook, and so the rumored deal with O2 would entail the greater risk of putting the high value Macbook into the cut-throat cellco channel.

The agreement is apparently still being hammered out, so an O2 Macbook would be unlikely to hit the market until next year, but two elements are almost certain - the Macbook would be subsidized, of course, but definitely not free, to retain the value that Apple seeks to associate with its products in comparison with PCs; and O2 would be an exclusive in the UK (and for some time, probably in the world.

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