“O2, the mobile phone company, laid the groundwork yesterday for an announcement of a tie-up with Apple to sell the US firm’s iPhone handset,” Elizabeth Judge reports for The Times Online.
“Peter Erskine, the O2 chief executive, defended Apple’s insistence that it receives a share of revenues from calls made on iPhones,” Judge reports. “Apple is expected to reveal that O2 will be its British network within the next few days.”
“Mr Erskine defended Apple’s insistence on sharing subscriber revenues with network operators, saying that such agreements were still advantageous,” Judge reports. “Revenue-sharing deals with handset manufacturers are unheard of within the mobile industry. Manufacturers such as Nokia usually receive no cut of the calls made on their devices.”
MacDailyNews Take: There’s a reason for that.
Judge continues, “Vodafone is thought to have pulled out of the bidding war for the iPhone in Britain because of its reluctance to give 10 per cent of revenues from calls to the California-based company.”
MacDailyNews Take: If so, that would confirm Vodafone is run by fools (which we already suspected because Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon Wireless in the U.S., which also foolishly blew the iPhone deal, losing out to AT&T).
Judge continues, “Mr Erskine also praised the iPhone as an ‘iconic device with unique features that have proven to have tremendous appeal to large numbers of customers in the US’… the iPhone has sold more than one million units [in the U.S.] since its launch on June 29… As well as the deal with O2, Orange is expected to be unveiled as Apple’s chosen partner in France, with T-Mobile the winner in Germany.”
Full article here.
