The narrative is pretty simple at this point: Apple launches the iPhone, screaming crowds camp out for days in advance. Right?
Not so fast, says UK phone blog Dialaphone. Based on an informal survey of outlets for the iPhone in England on Friday, he found many, many stores where no lines existed at all. Even the Apple Stores, which were busiest, didn’t have enough people to fill up its entire security section.
I especially like this photo of the forlorn-looking shop-keeper wondering when, precisely, he would be mobbed with iPhone shoppers.
When you couple this with news that T-Mobile sold 10,000 iPhones in Germany (that’s good news? Really?), the message seems to be that Europe is less comfortable with Apple’s locked-down iPhone attitude (and dinosaur data technology) than we Americans. Any Euro readers in the audience take the plunge? Anyone holding out for the next rev?
Via Digg.
Technorati Tags: hype, launch, iphone
36 responses to “European iPhone Launch Not Setting Continent on Fire?”
“When you couple this with news that T-Mobile sold 10,000 iPhones in Germany (that’s good news? Really?),”
Well, could you link us to a post you made before the Germany launch, where you predicted what a ‘good news’ launch would entail number wise? Or is this just a case of “well, whatever Germany and England announce, it missed the “whisper numbers” we all knew about beforehand but forgot to post earlier” similar to some analysts during the US first weekend numbers?
I personally don’t know what a “successful” launch was supposed to be in Europe. You seem to know this wasn’t a good one already. How about some details?
In the UK we’re used to getting our phones for free. No matter how cool it is, we know that if we wait until the end of our contract-year we’ll get it free when we re-new (except the iPhone). Also 70% of the UK is PAYG (Pay as you go) and as Apple doesn’t offer this option there’s a lot of people like me who would love an iPhone we just can’t be bothered to sign up for it. One Apple Premuim reseller has a poster in his window showing the iPod Touch with a price of £199 ($400) and the iPhone with a price of £899 ($1800). He just gets this by adding in the cost of the contract. When you compare this to people who will get the Nokia N95 (8gigs, 3G! etc etc) for free on their £25 per month contract (£300/$600) it’s no surprise that very few want the iPhone. Sure if I had money to burn I’d get one today…. but since I don’t I’ll stick with the cheap/free phones that do the job. Unlike their Macs now, the iPhone is only for the rich who want to be seen with one.
I also think queues are an American phenomenon which have little to do with the actual success of a product. When the iPhone is released here, I’m not going to queue, however bad I want one. I’ll just have to wait a few hours if need be.
Here in The Netherlands, tech-geeks’ unlocked iPhones — purchased from the US by internet — are much salivated after.
I don’t think he’s a shopkeeper, dude. Most of the o2, Vodafone, Orange, Car Phones Direct shops have spotty oiks flogging their plans to fellow yoofs. He looks like one of the security guards that o2 had in for a day just in case there was panic buying of the phones. He thought it was going to be like the first day of the January sales.
Wrong. o2 shop in my neck of the woods was just like any opther day, except for a gaggle of kids wanting to play with the iPhone.
To answer your question, yes, the whole trapped SIM issue is what will make the iPhone a slow burner over here. You can pretty much the same phone anywhere, so people have more ‘loyalty’ (for want of a better word) to their carrier, because it can so much of a perceived pain to chop around or change numbers.
And there really hasn’t been the same level of advertising that the iPod got. A slow burner.
Have to say I love mine though: but thene again, I’m on Vodafone.
The teenagers are gaga here over iPhone as the coolest, hippest accessory. The price isn’t bad for the hardware compared to high-end Nokias and the like, but the subscriptions are steep for parents. Pay-as-you-go makes much more sense from an allowance perspective.
Me, I’m waiting for a unlocked CE/FCC approved version. I travel 3-4 times to the states and elsewhere in the world and use different SIM cards to give myself a local presence when travelling and hold down costs for colleagues, clients, and friends. Right now my Treo is still going strong, but I hope it holds out long enough for the next generation iPhone.
I was in town during the afternoon of the launch, and only saw about 5 people queuing outside the 02 shop waiting for it to reopen at the 6:02pm launch time. My brother was in London and said a large queue had formed outside the Apple store, but I guess that was just expected from the Apple fans who wanted the new Apple toy.
Personally I think its the price that’s putting people off here. Pretty much every UK phone contract comes with a free phone. People are probably a bit put off having to sign a minimum £35 a month 18 month contract then have to shell out an extra £269 on top for the phone! its just a ridiculous price!
And what does that £35 a month give you? 200 free texts and 200 inclusive minutes… my £25 a month 02 contract gives me 750texts and 750minutes! Yes you get the free wifi & data with the iPhone, but still, its a bloody rip off and you would have to be stupid to get one!
Personally, I am sticking with my current phone/contract and treating myself to an iPod touch to get satisfy my multi-touch craving for new Apple gadgets!
A lot of early adopters here in Europe went ahead and bought an iPhone in (or from) the US, and de-simlocked it. I know several people who went that route. In various ways, the official release is anti-climatic, and given that the official route has expensive monthly fees and doesn’t do 3G, those who have resisted this long are likely to continue waiting.
I’ve seen plenty of advertising on TV, press, it was on the gadgetshow recently.
It’s not surprising there weren’t queues everywhere, it’s no longer a brand new product, had this been the debut of the iPhone in the world it may’ve been different, I was surprised to see as many people queuing as there were.
I was in a Car Phone Warehouse on the Saturday and the shop was quite busy, plenty of people looking at the two iPhones (it wasn’t a big store) there were a lot more people in the O2 across the street (this is Cambridge btw), again I saw more people in the larger Carphonewarehouse on Sunday and even more in the other O2 (Grafton Centre if you live here).
I guess it depends where you live.
Oh, I found the keyboard much easier to use than expected and safari was great, still, I can’t afford one, poor me. : ) I shall have to live with my k750i on payg heh
There are some key differences between Europe and the US which might explain the slower uptake. The European market doesn’t suffer from the feature gouging that the U.S. does – phones mostly do everything the manufacturers designed them to do. Phones are ‘free’ with contracts and MP3 features have been around for a few years and are very popular with people who are content to carry 10-20 albums worth of music with them. So whilst it is undeniable that the iPhone has the best interface and browser, feature-wise it isn’t quite as clear a winner as it is in the U.S.
For the time being, I’ll wait for the 3G 16Gb iPhone I expect will be released in the middle of ’08.
I was down in Canary Wharf on launch day, and the Carphone Warehouse there was almost deserted (this was about 6pm, but there was late opening until 8pm). Lots of extra staff, almost outnumbering customers….
I for one am not going to sign-up for such a rubbish tariff. I’m with T-Mobile and get *tons* more minutes/sms/web access for the same price. Plus, I’m more than attached to my Treo 680.
To be honest, if next year O2 come back with improved tariffs and Apple launch a version 2.0 of this (3G is a must) then I’ll bite. Until then, I’ll make do with my Treo/iPod Touch combination.
Why should anybody go nuts because of a phone?
I never ever understood that a product could have such an effect on anybody for him to sacrifice precious time on buying (!!!) something. Plus chances are good that all that iPhone news of the last months got people over fed and just not interested in a phone with mp3 function.
I definitely wanted to get an iPhone, but T-Mobile’s rates here in Germany are just ridiculous. The cheapest still costs 49 Euros and what do you get for it? 100 voice minutes. That’s a joke. I currently pay 35 Euros at T-Mobile and get unlimited voice calls to land lines, plus unlimited calls to T-Mobile mobiles, so all that comes on top is other mobile carriers.
Okay, you do get this data flat rate and some minutes at T-Mobile hotspots. But with EDGE that’s pretty much useless. Websurfing is all but impossible and even sending emails with attachments is a pain. At o2 you get UMTS/HDSCP (or whatever) for much less money.
Bottom line: you’d have to be crazy to buy the iPhone with those rates. Me, personally, I’ll wait until there are unlocked iPhones available and/or UMTS/broadband. And then only if I can use the iPhones broadband connection as a modem for my laptop. The iPhone as your personal Wify-hotspot: now that’s something I’ll pay money for. If I can cancel my DSL line at home and at the office then sure I would pay bucks for an unlimited data rate. The current rates are a terrible rip-off.
I have two problems with the iPhone and the iPod touch:
1.) it is a crippled Mac, no file access no spotlight search no terminal app, no custom apps at all, no direct updates via the internet, no downloads and installs via the internet, etc. etc. I see it as a notebook in a small format, I want to be able to do everything I can do on a normal Mac. No restrictions.
2.) a phone carrier must be an option, and a free choice. So no simm or an unlocked one.
Until the iPhone (or iPod touch, should be the same name for a device that is the same) meets the above requirements, I’ll never buy one.
Maybe the reason there are no huge queues is because in the UK we’ve heard nothing but iPhone this, iPhone that, iPhone developments, iPhone bricking and much much more iPhone stuff almost everyday since June. I’ve known at least two places to get games for iPhone for the past few months and a dozen websites developing iPhone applications, all months before it even went on sale here.
As a result the novelty has kind of worn off before it even was launched in the UK. Personally I want one for sure but after waiting for so long, I’m happy to wait longer and the next upgrade which some say will be announced in January, so the UK might have it by August next year for about a 30% increase in the purchase cost than Americans pay.
I feel the most important consideration is the ubiquity of O2 shops. There are at least two, if not three or four, just on Oxford Street. Plus, High Street in every neighborhood seems to have at least one or two. Why would I queue at 6 AM, when they’re likely available at every major tube stop at lunch? Then I can spend the rest of the workday toying with it at my desk – with my boss. The other factor is the maturity of the market. Everyone already has a mobile, including babies in prams and the dog (cats are too anti-social to carry a phone).
Apple’s market in the UK, and much of Europe, is as a replacement phone. Most under-30’s have had phones for years, and since they can text whilst simultaneously holding a conversation, changing to an unfamiliar handset would be quite disruptive, especially one without any positive-click feedback. Point-of-fact, this may be the one critical drawback in the iPhone’s design (at least in the UK). I’m not even sure I’m ready to switch to the iPod touch, since it too lacks the classic’s tactile controls.
UK is an entirely different market than the US. The gee-whiz crowd is much smaller, at least in raw number, and the market is already saturated with multi-purpose mobile phones. An expectation of frenzy for the iPhone is mistaken. But Apple is likely in for the long term, and once they shake out the individual market realities, they’ll become one of the bigger players. MEHSTG (above) mentions the two most basic, largest impediments to switching: locked-in carrier and new a phone number. You own your own phone number in the US. That’s not true everywhere else, and in the UK you need to remember 10 (or even 11) digits, not 7.
I live in Sweden and is one of those people that will buy just about anything that has the apple logo on it, I’m dying to get the iPhone to Sweden but it kinda sucks that it lacks 3G and an ok camera…(both in comparison with my Sony Ericsson K810)
Like many other people have pointed out, the iPhone is a very expensive toy with unique and admirable design qualities. However, for that much money missing features such as 3G and MMS are very difficult to explain (for God’s sake, no MMS?????).
Most importantly, unless Apple offers iPhone as an unlocked, stand-alone buy which I can use with whatever mobile operator I choose, I will never buy one. This lockdown policy is simply unheard of, here in Greece.
I am a big Apple fan. I love my Mac, but Apple really needs to fix up these ludicrous omissions.