How does Apple know that I called Apple from an iPhone?

I called Apple from France at 0805 540 003. The robot said: “I see that you are calling from an iPhone. Are you calling about this iPhone?” Indeed, I was calling from an iPhone. How does the robot know that?

This is suspect.

I can also only speculate about the reasons, but there are two things I can come up with:

1. you have probably enabled iMessage. In order to use this service effectively, when someone sends you a message via the iOS Messages App, Apple needs to determine if you are online, then you will receive the message as an iMessage, otherwise it will be send over some mobile carrier. As the end user receiving the message there is no difference recognizable, only as the sending user you are told that the message is sent as an SMS, as you will probably be charged by your mobile carrier for it. Therefore Apple has your mobile phone number stored in some kind of database, and will be able to see that you are calling from an iPhone.

2. In contrast to the old times of analogue telephony, today’s calls are almost always transmitted via Voice over IP. And in the headers of IP packages there are multiple variables in which information about the packet sending device are stored and transmitted. Therefore the receiving server knows how to „encode“ the message it wants to return. By this Apple could also determine from what kind of device you are calling.

Please keep in mind that I am in no kind an Apple employee or something, so my answer is only some „targeted guessing“ based on what I know has to go on in the background during calls and text messages.