“Matthew Key was in California last week, briefing Steve Jobs on the iPhone’s impact in the UK,” Andrew Parker reports for The Financial Times. “The incoming chief executive of O2 Europe, the exclusive mobile network for the iPhone in the UK, gave an upbeat report to Apple’s chief executive.”
“Mr Key says 200,000 iPhones should have be sold in Britain by early January – in line with his expectations since its November 9 launch, although some analysts claim his target is conservative. Gartner, the research firm, says sales of up to 400,000 should be possible,” Parker reports.
“A 3G version of the iPhone will be launched by Apple next year; Mr Key is confident that O 2 will also have an exclusive deal for the mark two device,” Parker reports. “O2 has signed a multi-year deal with Apple for the iPhone, and Mr Key insists Vodafone, for example, could not muscle in and take the 3G iPhone in the UK.”
“Capitalising on the iPhone will be one of Mr Key’s priorities when he succeeds Peter Erskine as chief executive of O 2 Europe at the end of January,” Parker reports.
“About 60 per cent of iPhone customers are sending or receiving more than 25 megabytes of data per month, which is the equivalent of sending 7,500 e-mails. By comparison, only 1.8 per cent of O2 ‘s other mobile customers on monthly contracts are consuming more than 25MB per month,” Parker reports. “The O2 research suggests that, after years of dashed hopes for the operators, customers are on the verge of surfing the web on their mobiles in significant numbers.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike in Helsinki” for the heads up.]
iPhone customers use data because the device wasn’t designed by blind, tasteless engineering monkeys and bland bean counters who are concerned infinitely more about profit than usability. For one example: the ease with which iPhone takes a photo and emails it routinely astounds non-iPhone users. Leaves ’em speechless. Beyond being sad, that’s also a telling indictment of the state of non-Apple mobile device makers’ user interfaces (or lack thereof).
C1: “Don’t make me punish you.”
O.K., as long as that’s not an idol threat.
“iPhone users are surfing more NOT because of the web experience but because of the UNLIMITED DATA PLAN!”
I disagree with that. Unlimited mobile internet has been around for a long time, and exists from many phone carriers besides ATT, but people still don’t use it because the internet sucks. It takes me minutes to check my e-mail on my nokia. I would love to get a iPhone, but I have this crazing thing against buying a first gen gadget. I know, the iPhone is great and has a great satisfaction rating, but that’s just how I was raised.
I had free internet on my company Alltel phone for a year. I never used it after the first week because it sucked. Horribly.
It is not much better on my company AT&T;Samsung.
It is the interface that makes the unlimited worth using. The iPhone’s got it, others don’t.
You know, I’m sure this is a “bit” off topic, but I keep having “wow!” moments (keep it clean folks!) with my iPhone. I’ve had it since mid-July and every now and then I am surprised to find a tiny detail that someone at Apple actually took the time to engineer into this wonderful phone. My most recent “wow” was when I had been reading a semi-long web page and needed to go back to the top of the page, my finger accidentally tapped the top of the browser window and “wow”, it scrolled back to the top.
This may be a documented feature (from the manual) but I hardly ever read manuals. It is this type of thought and engineering that goes into everything that Apple makes. How often do we get wow’ed (keep it clean) from everyday products anymore? Apple gets it. It’s important to make the customer happy and to keep expectations high.
Apple has spoiled me, I now expect that in everything I buy.
@ El Gaupo,
Wow! I just tried that, and yep! a big Wow from me! damn…. how the heck do they come up with all these things?!?!? Very impressive!
@ El Guapo
And to think I’ve been scrolling ALL THE WAY BACK UP to the top of these long comment pages every time. Sheesh!!!
Thanks!
@ Davidlow
“Send photos by text message”
? doesn’t that sound a bit silly at all?
Been using the tap-at-the-top-of-a-webpage to instantly scroll back to the top for so long I can’t remember how I learned of this feature. Could be from the iPhone intro that Apple put up when iPhone went on sale.
Now, I’m wishing for some sort of feature that would allow instant scrolling a la tapping on a letter in the list of contacts. That would be so helpful for navigating around long comments.
One of the great things about iPhone is that updates have existed, exist now, and will be existing in the future.
I bought an iPhone and took it back a couple of days later. It’s a great device but the speed of edge sucks big time, dunno if this is just the UK or the same for any Edge connection. I’m waiting for the 3G model. I bought my iPhone from the O2 store, they have a 14 day no quibble money back guarantee. I made some calls and did a fair bit of surfing, they didn’t charge me anything for what i’d used and I got a full refund on the phone. I found that a webpage that typically took a second or two to load via WiFi took up to 60 seconds over Edge. That was when I could find Edge, it only has about 30% coverage in the UK and they’re not going to expand it. Bring on the 3G iPhone – release at MWSF would be nice.
Uh… as has been said, the surge in data usage means nothing because O2 offer an unlimited data package for £7.50 a month. Therefore no extra revenue is beign generated.
As for numbers, let’s see what they actually are, not what the CEO of a company whose future profits depend on the success of this device speculatively thinks they may be.
– I accidentally figured out the automatically scrolling to the top of a long webpage about a month ago and I was totally blown away by it. I felt dumb that I had previously wasted time using my finger to rapidly scroll back up…
– I am amazed about how easy it is to send a SINGLE picture via e-mail, but can someone please point out how I can send more than one picture in a single e-mail?
– Also, it is very annoying that I can’t send something like a “Happy New Year” via text to multiple users at the same time. Even my mother’s $49 phone can do this