No, not the very clever people in Apple who designed the phone, but the just as clever in different ways people who worked out how to hack the phone so it could be used anywhere, and add a variety of extra goodies not courtesy of the Apps Store.
As an long time iPhone owner in Thailand, I have had to rely on them to make my first generation iPhone usable here. And they have done so, through a variety of firmware updates; the latest being 3.0, released by Apple yesterday and already hacked by the Dev-Team and already used by me to get up to date. Thank you
If you want it, here it is, come and get it: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/