Must admit I've not seen the shops mobbed with people trying to get them.

'Early days' for iPhone sales, says O2 | Business | Guardian Unlimited

Mobile phone company O2 claims to have sold "tens of thousands" of iPhones over the weekend, despite little evidence of a repeat of the long queues seen outside stores when the device launched in the US over the summer.

Chief executive Peter Erskine, announcing third-quarter results today, also predicted that the UK pre-pay mobile phone market will decline this year for the first time in the history of the industry as the mobile phone companies focus on acquiring users willing to sign a contract.

Customers buying an iPhone, for instance, have to sign up for 18 months. Erskine said the company's own-branded stores are currently seeing three times as many visitors as the same time last year, thanks to the new Apple device which went on sale in the UK last Friday.

He said sales through O2 stores are outstripping those in Carphone Warehouse, the only independent retailer stocking the phone, and Apple's own stores, with "tens of thousands" sold to date through the O2 store network.

There have been reports that O2 and Carphone stores have seen lacklustre sales of the phone, but Erskine said "the initial feedback is we are in-line with our expectations".

T-Mobile in Germany announced over the weekend that it had sold 10,000 phones by the end of the first afternoon. Erskine stressed it is "early days" and refused to give an exact figure for his company's sales in the UK, adding only that reports that over 100,000 being bought were exaggerated.

Asked about speculation that people had been put off by the price of the phone, which costs £269 plus the 18-month contract, he added "that's certainly not what we are finding".

While many of these extra visitors to O2's stores were merely there to play with the gadget, the O2 chief executive said he hoped overall sales would increase as staff tried to sell this wave of shoppers additional items.

"It's the old story in retail, if you can get them in you can sell them something," he said. "What I don't know yet ... is how much extra we are selling as a result of all the extra footfall."

O2, which won the exclusive deal to sell the phone in the UK despite fierce competition from Orange and T-Mobile who are selling it in France and Germany, has ordered hundreds of thousands of iPhones to meet demand in the run-up to Christmas.

UK chief executive Matthew Key expects to sell over 200,000 in the Christmas and New Year period.

Erskine said that two-thirds of the first wave of iPhone buyers are customers that are new to O2, which has hired an extra 1,400 staff to deal with demand.

Over time O2 expects three-quarters of iPhone customers to come from its rivals such as Orange and Vodafone.

News of the iPhone launch came as O2, owned by Spain's Telefónica, announced third-quarter results showing revenues increased to €3.7bn (£2.6bn) from €3.6bn last year.

In the UK, where O2 is the largest network with 17.9 million customers, revenues increased 9.7% to €1.94bn. As a result of the strong performance and expectations of good iPhone sales, Erskine this morning upped his annual forecast for O2's UK business. The company had expected revenue growth of 15% to 18% this year and now expects it to be at the top end of this initial range.

O2 added a total of 115,0000 new customers in the third quarter, 5% down on the same period last year. The company actually lost 44,000 pre-pay customers during the quarter, making up for the shortfall by adding 159,000 contract customers.

Erskine said he expects the size of the overall UK pre-pay market to reduce this year - for the first time ever - as the network operators move high usage pre-pay customers onto contracts and stop chasing low use customers.

"I think we are all focused on the post-pay customer," he said.

O2 has put a lot of advertising behind its SIMplicity tariff which is aimed at persuading pre-pay customers to sign up for a longer period.

He said the pre-pay customers that O2 lost in the period were low usage customers.

"We are losing people for whom frankly it was the spare phone or the infrequently used phone," he explained.

my friend still works in the CPW store i used to work in. they had a extra late night for the launch of the phone. i texted him today to ask how it went and i havent heard back yet!! could mean he was mobbed!!

If the iPhone is anything like the iPod touch (which it is), I would have one, both brilliant bits of kit.

Can't recommend the touch enough

If the iPhone is anything like the iPod touch (which it is), I would have one, both brilliant bits of kit.

Can't recommend the touch enough

i did look into getting one, but once you get past the screen and the graphical interface, theres not much storage space, or camera, or 3G.

its a bit like most page 3 girls, great to look at, but missing a bit up top

Hmmm, interesting. I know of one guy at work who was intending to goto the local O2 shop on Friday night, but I've not had chance to catch up with him yet

Looks a great bit of kit, but was just a bit too much outlay - for me anyway. So I went with an N95...

Steve

too expensive to begin with, too much per month for the tariff, has no 3G, rubbish camera, terrible for texting, etc etc

It's all a bit "Emperor's New Clothes" if you ask me

I'm with Wet Kipper and Sam Leith on this:

An iPhone user is soon parted with his money - Telegraph

Yesterday, you'd be forgiven for thinking, if you were watching the telly or reading the papers, you saw the dawning of a new epoch in human history.

Future historians will draw timelines, you were encouraged to believe, punctuated by shifts of equivalent importance: ice ages; extinctions; the dawn of Homo sapiens; the discovery of agriculture; the invention of moveable type; the Enlightenment; the Industrial Revolution; the nuclear age; the invention of the internet ...

And then, yesterday: Friday, November 9 2007 AD. The day on which everything changed. The day on which - like an extraterrestrial monolith descending on a troop of awestruck chimps in 2001: A Space Odyssey - the iPhone went on sale in the UK.

The response has been, in some quarters, panic: the digging of shelters, the hoarding of tinned food and the wearing of tinfoil on the head. There have been unconfirmed reports of rioting in Barking. There has been looting in Luton. Cargo cults have formed in Esher.

Moaning peasants have made their way under a baleful winter sun down the central reservation of the M4, muttering religious imprecations in languages unheard of since the days of the elder gods. Jeremy Clarkson was believed to have been seen building an ark.

To help its dwindlingly small band of readers face this momentous day and all it means, this column is rolling out an easy-to-use technical support service. It is, like all the products of this column, user-friendly and WYSIWYG. It benefits from unique ReadPage© functionality. Here goes.

Technology Clinic: Your iPhone Questions Answered

Q: Is it a mobile phone?

A: Yes - but it's more than that. It's a mobile phone that works on only one network, that ties you into an 18-month contract, and that is very, very expensive.

Q: Is it an MP3 player?

A: Yes - but it's more than that. It's an MP3 player that holds only 2,000 songs and that is very, very expensive.

Q: Is it an internet browser?

A: Yes - but it's more than that. It's an internet browser that goes half as fast as one of those rotten old 3G mobile phones - and works across only 30 per cent of the country unless you're at a wireless hotspot. Oh, and it's very, very expensive.

Q: What is the correct term for an adult human being who's prepared to spend upwards of £1,200 to own a mobile phone for 18 months, just because it is made by Apple?

A: A wazzock.

Q: What is the correct term for an adult human being who will pitch a tent outside a shop overnight in order to be one of the first people on Earth to spend upwards of £1,200 to own a mobile phone for 18 months, just because it is made by Apple?

A: An utter wazzock.

Q: Does the Apple corporation do a valuable service to the general population by rolling out the iPhone, so that wazzocks and utter wazzocks can be quickly identified and - where appropriate - persecuted?

A: It does.

These foundational issues resolved, let's consider another question. The received wisdom so far has been that Apple is good and cool and nice, and that Microsoft is evil and rapacious and bad: Apple = The Kids; Microsoft = The Man.

Geeks are now griping, however, that Apple has betrayed The Kids and sold out to The Man, because it is trying to prevent The Kids from hacking its iPhones so as to allow them to work with other mobile-phone networks. And it's like, so unfair and, like, fascist.

If there's anything worse than a fashion victim, it's a whining fashion victim with a misplaced sense of entitlement. Apple is perfectly within its rights to restrict its phone to work on whatever network it likes at whatever price. Caveat emptor. If you want to use another network, buy another phone. Why shouldn't your warranty be voided if you try to cheat your way round it?

If I find a way of hacking my London Transport Oyster card so it works on the buses in Edinburgh, that's not me bravely sticking it to The Man: that's me stealing. If I hack my iPhone to work on another network - when I bought it in full knowledge that Apple has a deal with O2 - that's also stealing.

The idea that this is analogous to the behaviour that landed Microsoft in its antitrust case doesn't stand up to a moment's examination. Microsoft was accused of exploiting an enormous existing stranglehold over the market in order to force other products on a public already locked in to Windows.

Apple has no mobile-phone monopoly, no MP3-player monopoly, no web-browser monopoly. It is simply offering a new device with certain terms attached that the customer can take or leave.

Owning an iMac doesn't force you to buy an iPhone. Having an existing phone contract with O2 doesn't force you to buy an iPhone. The only thing that forces you to buy an iPhone is your slavish conviction that without it you will be half a person.