“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.]