The march continues: Softbank, Japan’s third-biggest mobile phone operator, will start selling Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhones in the country by the end of this year, the company said...no more details on whether the company would be the exclusive provider of the phones in Japan, reports Reuters. DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) has been seen as a contender to get the iPhone but not word from them yet. Japan is a big market for other Apple products like its Macs and iPods, so the companies are hoping iPhone will be a big hit in the country with great phones, and Apple hopes this will push it over its goal of shipping 10 million iPhones world-wide by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, separately, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) has reached a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Spain. It would start selling it at some point in 2008..it did not say if it had exclusive rights to sell the handset in Spain, reports WSJ. Initially Apple had insisted on exclusivity to sell in a certain country but it has begun to break from that pattern in recent deals.