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Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone’s First Night flops
[Quote:]
Journalists and PR minders outnumbered buyers on Friday night as interest in Apple’s iPhone miserably failed to live up to the pre-launch hype in the UK.
The iPhone went on sale at stores operated by retail titan Carphone Warehouse, exclusive operator O2, and Apple’s own retail chain. The days preceding the launch had been filled with pages of coverage from posh papers and broadsheets alike. O2 announced it was employing 1,400 extra staff to cope with the short-term demand. Even Carphone’s PR staff were dispatched to far corners of the land, to provide expert advice to the masses clamouring for iPhones.
But now it looks as if a tight-knit group of media and PR people got caught in a feedback loop. The “event” they imagined simply failed to take place.
The first signs that reality was not following the script came at 7pm, from a Reg reader at Brent Cross. Perched by Wembley on the North Circular, Brent Cross is a shopping hub reaching into millions of affluent punters in Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, as well as the metropolis itself. He noted that the Carphone and O2 stores were empty of punters, with only “the usual” smattering of shoppers at the Apple Store, playing with iPods.
All it shows is that the mobile phone market here is quite different from the one in the USA. But you’d think journalist would know that..
Anyway, let’s look from another angle. I import a phone for USD 399, which is about EUR 280 at the moment. I have a 250 minute SIM-only plan that sets me back EUR 9,50 a month, and unlimited gprs for EUR 9,95. Let’s round that up to EUR 20 together, so for 2 years, an iPhone would cost me 280+(24*20)=EUR 760. Let’s also assume that the German t-mobile will get the Dutch contract, for similar prices. I would have to pay EUR 399 for the hand set, EUR 25 for an “activation fee”, and a contract. There’s a 200-minute contract that would be too few minutes for me, and at EUR 0.39 per minute extra the next larger contract is the best option. That would be EUR 89 a month. So, total for the two-year minimum: 399+25+(24*89)= EUR 2560.
Now tell me again why Apple sees so many handsets “disappear” without contract from the US market, and why the UK launch fizzled…
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