California’s purveyor of cool gadgets, Apple, is making deals left, right and centre this month, with Swiss incumbent Swisscom revealed as the latest iPhone partner network.

In the now familiar one line announcement style, Swisscom said it too would be bringing the iPhone to its users “later this year”.

This latest development follows a rash of announcements from all over the globe. Known partners to date are America Movil, Optus, SingTel, Bharti Airtel, Globe, Vodafone, TIM and Rogers, which will join existing carriers AT&T, Telefonica O2, T-Mobile and Orange.

Stocks of the existing 8GB and 16GB iPhone have also dried up at the Apple stores in both the US and UK as well as at the operator shops, although T-Mobile and Orange are still selling the device in Germany and France. This is leading to renewed speculation that Apple is gearing up to release a new version of the device at its big summer event next month.