Vodafone New Zealand's website has been updated, indicating that 3 stores (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) are to open at midnight, to be the first in New ZEaland (and the world) to sell the new iPhone 3G. The information (and locations of where iPhones appear to be going on sale later in the day) can be found at on their website

That's the date that we now know will see the official release of an iPhone into the New Zealand mobile phone market in the form of the iPhone 3G. At the time of writing, few other details are available about how the phone will become available and on what plans through Vodafone, but what is known is the apparent lack of an option for prepay customers.

Confusion has developed over the past 24 hours since the announcement that the iPhone 3G is on its way to New Zealand, with one version of the official Press Release being edited to remove the term "prepay". Vodafone New Zealand have now confirmed (despite conflicting with two other Press Releases) that the iPhone will only be available "on account" within New Zealand as each country tailors its offering to customers.

The story broke when an eagle-eyed NZMac.com user noticed the change to the Press Release on the Vodafone.co.nz website, with the term "prepay" removed yesterday afternoon. However at the time of posting this story, the Press Release on the Apple.co.nz website and Vodafone.com website continue to mention the term. It should be noted however that the latter two press releases relate to four countries, so it appears that the editing locally concerns the situation in New Zealand.

Vodafone, the world's leading international mobile communications group, and Apple today announced that the highly anticipated iPhone 3G will be available in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal on July 11, and in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, India, South Africa and Turkey later this year. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.