iPhone gets interesting again
Well, the iPhone finally arrived on Vodafone today, following Orange in breaking the previous O2 stranglehold and taking UK carriers to a grand total of three.
Now, there hasn’t quite been the almighty price war that we might have hoped, but, given that Orange sold 30,000 units on first day of sales and Vodafone is reporting 50,000 sales, it seems that people are still clamouring for this phone, despite the tough competition of some amazing Android handsets in the past year.
Orange and Vodafone have nearly identical deals and tariffs, but Vodafone has been stressing the strength of its network performance for potential iPhone owners, especially ones who have had issues with O2.
And if T-Mobile’s proposed merger with Orange goes through, it’ll leave just 3 as the only UK network without the iPhone on its roster – for now.
With the UK market opening up, plus rumours of a 4th-gen iPhone 4G already hotting up (with one report claiming it could be here as early as April) it looks as if the iPhne just got interesting again.
User comments (4)
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Pix137714 January 2010
I work for o2 in a reasonably senior role within the business division. In response to Jon's comment regarding network issues with o2. These issues were as a result of the increase in popularity of 3G devices and namely the iphone. No other network had anywhere near the same amount of users making calls and using data over 3G at that time. O2 has invested £20m in the network over the last quarter to resolve these issue. What you will now see as Orange and Voda sell more and more iphones is that they will experience the same issues! The bit that has always made me laugh is the media speculating massive price reductions when it goes to all networks like o2 were being greedy and making hay while the sun shines but the fact is the profit margin is tiny with Apple taking a revenue percentage and so don't ever expect to see a price war.
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Derick Donaldson16 January 2010
I am all for new and exiting ways to communicate but please remember those of us who are unable to enjoy 3G let alone the hoped for 4G. It really is amazing that some people in semi rural areas in the UK have to put up with signal strengths that would be unacceptable in Iran, Pakistan or large parts of Thailand. Given that we are about to be rewarded with astonishing technology in the coming decade perhaps a little more investment in infrastructure is not too much to hope for before I expire of old age.
Report as inappropriatetakkischitt17 January 2010
3 are selling iPhone's... not sure what the setup is, but my housemate is on 3 and got an iPhone just last week... it was set up in German and had a European plug in the box so came with a 3rd party UK charger... so not sure what setup they've got going, but there you go...
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