Telefonica Czech Republic has rejected sales of the iPhone 4S and other versions of Apple’s smartphone due to a dispute over reported business terms. Two other carriers will offer the new handset instead, which has sold at a record pace since a mid-October introduction.
Although a report by Hospodarske Noviny contained only sketchy details from a Telefonica spokesman, Apple is rumored to demand the carrier subsidize the iPhone’s selling price by up to 40 percent, a marked increase over other smartphones.
The report isn’t unexpected, given Telefonica and Apple had failed to reach an agreement as late as last week. The Czech Republic was part of a 22-nation iPhone 4S rollout Apple announced October 28. According to the Wall Street Journal report (subscription required) , the Czech unit of Telefonica “will focus on already much higher volume sales of smart phones based on rival operating systems, including Google Inc.’s Android and Nokia Corp.’s Symbian.”
While still available from Vodafone and T-Mobile International in the Czech Republic, the announcement that Telefonica is dropping the iPhone is a departure from the usual courting by carriers.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
4 responses to “Czech Carrier Won’t Offer iPhone 4S Due To Apple’s Terms”
This is an FYI call from Czech Republic:
Glad, that you are covering this news. For someone without the knowledge of local situation this might seem a bit odd. However this came as no surprise for most of us here. Czech carriers have been gutting us for years with their overpriced plans and tech. To subsidy something is like a swear word for them.Â
Recently (a month or two) Apple has opened up its online store for us, which came as a huge relief for all! Prices are finally fair, no resellers with cruel margins, and this really got things to move, because there is at least some alternative now.
Vodafone (one other carrier here) f.e. offers only a maximum of 30% subsidy from the Apple Store priced 4S with 2 years contract on the most expensive plan they offer!! To buy the 4S without a plan from them actually means to pay 10% extra, than what Apple sells 4S here for without a SIM.
Apple has cornered O2 to offer something somewhat reasonable (being the biggest carrier in the country), because they are knowledgable about the ridiculous situation on our market, and the way carriers have been treating us for years now. O2 has simply refused to do so out of greed. End of story. They do not fear consequences, since there is no competition on the market, and all three carriers are pulling the strings together to keep the prices of plans at the same level, which is BTW in average the highest in all of EU. So no need to subsidy and compete a little. People wil have to come to them anyways, and pay and pay.
Our twitter is full of it. People are more and more pissed off, and there have been attempts to strike, to change that, to push them to sense, but without any success. Even the state knows that, and still has failed in past years to do anything about that.
Would love to cheer up, maybe some day it will get better, but for now…
Petr (Prague, CZ)
Their loss. I suppose they’re happy being #3