First a disclaimer: this is my own opinion and no official Vodafone statement:
According to this posterous post and this (dutch) newsbit Jens Schult-Bockum (JSB), CEO of Vodafone Netherlands has said that "Vodafone made a huge mistake by not winning the iPhone deal" two years ago. At that time, JSB was Global Director of Terminals at Vodafone Group. Fast forward to 2009. JSB is now CEO of Vodafone Netherlands. In the UK the exclusive iPhone deal with O2 has ended and at the (very) last moment, Vodafone UK joined Orange in carrying the iPhone for 2010. I'm assuming that the T-Mobile exclusivity deal in the Netherlands (and Germany) is going to end in 2010 as well. Add to that the JSB statement and it's not that difficult to figure out that it is very possible that Vodafone Netherlands (and Germany) will join the iPhone deal in the very near future. That's positive. More choices for the user. With the better network, Vodafone might easily collect convert T-mobile users to switch. Vodafone360 will get its own iPhone app as well, albeit limited in functionality. However, if the iPhone comes to Vodafone, that won't be an issue anymore and Vodafone360 may be a full-fledged service. (Not sure how they will handle this technically, with the sandbox application model in the iPhone)A lot of times you hear people (myself included) say the iPhone is great but the T-Mobile network sucks. Well, the above may make those users happier :-)
Exciting times ahead? You bet. Let's just say the silly season (sic) has begun.