It was hardly the best kept secret 'round these parts, but as of 10:00 AM BST (that's 5:00 AM by our Timex Ironman watches), the iPhone became officially official in the UK. Jobs hopped on the iPlane this morning, to deliver a decidedly low-key keynote in the London. The handset will be available in the UK on islands' biggest carrier, O2, at £269 (535 USD) for the 8GB version, starting November 9th.

For that truly authentic American iPhone experience, the British version will also operate on the sub-3G EDGE network. The phones will also tout WiFi compatibility with UK provider, Cloud. As for the whole Starbucks compatibility thing, Steve just smiled and said, "You'll have to ask Starbucks about that. They love the UK." Hm. There's a purple icon on the phone that will be compatible with the UK version of the WiFi store, later this month.

Asked a question about availability in other Euopean countries, he answered, "We're here to talk about O2 UK, and that's all we're willing to talk about today." Oh, Steve, you lovable illusive CEO, you.

We asked phone analyst, Sascha Segan to chime in about the announcement. And, not surprisingly, he had no shortage of opinion on the matter. Check out Sascha's thoughts, after the jump.

The iPhone looks revolutionary in the US, but it has a harder row to hoe in Europe. First of all, only 30% of the UK is covered by EDGE, forcing the iPhone down to GPRS in many places--and GPRS is so slow as to make Web browsing completely intolerable. Apple could have gotten around this problem by including a UMTS modem, but they chose not to so they could have longer battery life. Without EDGE, the iPhone's Internet features will be very frustrating to use. The free Wi-Fi hotspot deal helps make up for that somewhat; I don't know how pervasive Cloud's hotspots are [Some 7,000 hotspots in the UK, according to the O2 guy -BH].

The high-end, multimedia phone market in Europe is also much more competitive than it is here, with phones like the 5-megapixel, Windows Media compatible Nokia N95 getting the full sales treatment through various carriers. And Apple's reliance on exclusive deals with a single carrier to make money by skimming off subscription revenues will find a real challenge on a continent where unlocking phones is not only common, it's required by law in some countries.

It'll be interesting to see whether Apple's US-born business and technology model will survive in the very different European mobile marketplace.