Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart wrote on Monday that Apple is having a tough time finding a network operator partner to carry the iPhone in Europe. The reason? Apple's outrageous demands and insistence on absolute control over the iPhone. The net result might force Apple to adopt a retail distribution model if it hopes to sell the iPhone in Europe.

I can't say this surprises me all that much. Apple is Apple, and Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs. If there's one thing Jobs seems to require, it's absolute control of Apple products. He might have worked magic on AT&T here in the U.S., but apparently he's not so deft at convincing European operators. Greengart said:

"Operators consistently told us, not for attribution, of course, that they had spoken to Apple and found the company 'unbelievably arrogant', making demands that 'simply cannot be justified no matter how hot the product is.'"

Apple may have forced AT&T to consent to a number of unusual requests to carry the iPhone, but the European operators aren't having any of it. Neither did Verizon Wireless, which passed on the iPhone. One of the demands is likely a revenue-sharing deal of monthly subscriber fees, which AT&T is rumored to have agreed to. Greengart didn't mention which operators Current Analysis had spoken to, but some of them mentioned they would never carry the iPhone.

Without a carrier partner to distribute the iPhone, Apple would be forced to sell it via its retail outlets. It would have to be sold unlocked, without a SIM card, so interested European customers could scoop it up and use it with their existing wireless service. It's not clear, though, how certain features of the iPhone that are network-dependent, such as visual voicemail, could work without a network partnership.

Apple had said it would launch the iPhone in Europe in the 4th quarter of this year with a single carrier to cover all of Europe. There's no word whether or not that release time frame might be pushed further into the future if it is unabe to strike a deal with the likes of Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, or others.