“Most [O2] stores are believed to have missed iPhone targets by some distance, with a typical-sized O2 store selling just one iPhone per week. However, that appeared to change in the final seven days, with O2 staff reporting a big upturn, with many stores selling one per day, and even more in large city centre stores.”

Doesn’t sound like sales were much better for CPW either.

No queues, very quiet cash registers, 1 member of staff per person in store… girls in the streets desperately trying to give away booklets and drag people into stores…

If this is typical across the country then its time for Apple/O2 to go to plan B

The staff were amusing themselves by messing around and one of the staff was saying ‘I guess it will be busier tomorrow’. This is either a testament to the efficiency of the sales process (very good) or a worrying sign for Apple / O2…

People are getting are being forced to disentangle their business and their private information (most people don’t use work email for private messages any more – although they used to but now IT management is so impersonal, every time you change job you loose all of your emails from your Mum). A lot of people may still get free private calls on work phones but all of the useful phone stuff is pretty much fully integrated with their work back-end data infrastructure. Keeping your diary noting who you have slept with on your work Exchange server is pretty much a no-no.

So people want a really good private life management solution that’s as tailored as their work mobile solution but ties in with the private calendars, email, photos, web browsing. This is what the iPhone is. It uses ubiquitous connectivity to connect to the consumer back-end infrastructure, plays personal music and generally replaces the personal gadgets and dog-eared photos that people have had to carry with them. It’s as good for _doing_ private life as the Blackberry is for doing work. I don’t think that the phone call bit is that important. What is important is that people’s organisation servers which live in the big data centres of Yahoo and Google are, as they say, now just a phone call away.

However I may be way off beam – but that is why I want one (as does my ever-loving and my…)

I know of one for sure, me!

Great write up Ewan!

I’ll wait a few months till the 2nd Generation iphone comes out next year i think…