By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 11:00 AM EST

Speaking to the Italian press on Monday, Apple's Europe boss stated that iPhone will be available only alongside a cellular contract when it arrives overseas later this year. Meanwhile, it looks like there's sorry news on the 'Flash on iPhone' and 'ZFS on Mac OS X' fronts.

Apple Europe frontman Pascal Cagni won't say precisely when and with which provider Apple plans to launch its iPhone in Europe, but when it does arrive it won't be offered with pre-paid plans that are popular in parts of the region.

Cagni told the Italian-language seeteB.IT that the Apple handset is slated for availability "at the end" of 2007 and will only be sold with a service contract.

Translation of relevant parts (thanks, Chris):

Q1) could you be more specific about the previous announcement that
the iPhone will be available in Europe in the 'fourth quarter'?

A: "We still don't know, the [release] period will be toward the end
of the year"

Q2) Have you chosen a carrier for Europe?

A: About the carrier, we still don't have any news to provide you. I
can say that for Italy, those of you very accustomed to pre-paid,
there will be issues with the iPhone.

Q3) then a more pointed question is asked: "...does this mean Apple
will pursue the same subscription only strategy in Europe & Italy (as
it is doing the US)?"

A: Yes, I can confirm that it has been decided that it will only be
offered by subscription"

iPhone to support YouTube

Meanwhile, there's sure to be some dashed hopes if iPhone arrives later this month without support for Adobe's Flash media format. Right now, Flash is looking more like a "maybe" than a guarantee.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs told the New York Times that "you might see" Flash support come to iPhone, but YouTube support would be present regardless.

"Yeah, YouTube -- of course," he said. "But you don’t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ‘em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec."

Jobs also confirmed that iPhone won't support Java. "[It's] not worth building in," he said. "Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain."

ZFS mystery

More certain appears to be the state of ZFS on Mac OS X, or lack thereof. Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS X, told InformationWeek that "ZFS is not happening," when asked whether the Sun-developed Zettabyte File System would appear in Leopard.

Instead, Leopard will reportedly use Apple's current hierarchical file system, called HFS+.

Strangely, just five days prior Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz boasted during a company event that Apple would announce at its developers conference a plan to make ZFS the default file system for Leopard.

Update: An Apple spokesperson contacted InformationWeek on Tuesday seeking to clarify Croll's statement. "Croll was apparently supposed to indicate that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

The publication is reportedly drafting a separate story to note Apple's mis-statement and "hopefully to reveal more about how ZFS would work in Leopard."