“Vodafone delivered 50,000 iPhones to its customers on the first day of sales, as the UK’s appetite for Apple’s iconic device continues unabated,” Nick Clark reports for The Independent.
“The group became the third UK operator to offer its customers the iPhone yesterday, four months after Orange announced it had broken O2’s exclusive hold over the phone in Britain,” Clark reports. “Tesco, which operates its own brand mobile business in partnership with O2, also sells the iPhone.”
Clark reports, “This came despite Vodafone offering customers the device on a similar tariff to Orange and O2, scotching talk that a bitter price war was set to break out. Both Orange and Vodafone have instead looked to sell the phone off the strength of their networks.”
“This is part of a strategy by rivals to highlight perceived issues at O2. Yesterday’s announcement comes just weeks after Ronan Dunne, the chief executive of O2, apologised for problems at the group’s network in London last year. He said the service had suffered as the use of smartphones, such as the iPhone, increased strain on the network from the huge rise in internet usage. O2 said data traffic in the UK was doubling every four months,” Clark reports. “O2 has sold more than a million iPhones since it secured exclusive rights in the UK in 2007.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Gideon” for the heads up.]
American phone companies read this and weep, your arguments are falling apart as your parent companies/Subsidiaries are proving that service not price is what matters.
MDN: Where’s the bloodbath?
How many Nexus Ones?
LMAO!!!
SO HOW MANY iPhones HAVE ALL 3 COMPANIES SOLD IN TOTAL IN THE UK?
No way in hell I am upgrading my 1g and 3g now, bring on the 4g!
Vodaphone sells 50,000 iPhones in the UK on their first day, against established competitors also selling the iPhone, and in a relatively small country. (No offense intended)
Google barely sells 20,000 Nexus One phones in their first week, against no one else selling the NO, in the much larger US market.
Draw your own conclusions.
Yet more proof that Apple knows multi-carrier model is the way to go at this point in the iPhone’s development. They will be on other U.S. networks this year. I’d be willing to bet at least 1 million Verizon customers would buy an iPhone in the first week alone, if given the chance. There’s so much pent-up demand there.
@Tony
Agreed.
T-Mobile, T-Mobile!!