In an exclusive interview with All Things Digital, the chief executive of wireless giant France Telecom, reveals details about Apple’s next-gen iPhone, including its smaller, thinner design.

France Telecom’s networks carry traffic from more iPhones than any other carrier except AT&T France Telecom, with its Orange brands, sells the iPhone in 15 countries, according to the report.

Stephane Richard, CEO of France Telecom, which is known by the brand Orange, expressed concern that Apple has unilateral power as to which apps do and don’t get on its network – and he also confirmed an earlier report that France Telecom, whose Orange brand carries the iPhone in 15 countries, and Apple are working together to develop a smaller SIM card to accommodate the next-gen iPhone’s miniscule size.

“That’s true, Richard said, and it’s a compromise designed to appease Apple’s desire for something smaller without resorting to a software-only virtual SIM card that Apple had initially been advocating,” the AllThingsD.com report said.

“We are going to work with them in order to standardize a new format of SIM which takes into account our needs with security and authentication and also is compatible with their wishes in terms of size,” Richard told All Things Digital in the exclusive interview. “I understood that the next iPhone would be smaller and thinner and they are definitely seeking some space.”

As far as Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry line is concerned, Richard said the brand is still popular in Europe.

“They have customers and users that are quite faithful to them. It works more or less like a community of people. It’s often families that are big BlackBerry users, and of course companies,” he told All Things Digital, but admits RIM has had some quality issues, especially with the next generations of devices.

“In my view as a customer, or as a partner of them, I think they really should fix very quickly their quality problems,” Richard said.

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