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Published by Ewan on Friday 25th July 2008, 11:33 | Related | Filed Under

Electric Pig is reporting that o2’s exclusive contract with the iPhone in the UK is due to end soon.

They’re quoting some users on comparison site, Omio who’ve:

…had “word from a very, very credible source on the inside that the iPhone 3G will be available on Orange in the UK, possibly as soon as October.”

Hmm.

We shall talk to our o2 contacts. I suspect they will deny.

Update: They did.

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Viewing 8 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Wow, Electric Pig has an obnoxious amount of iPhone coverage! It's like The Sun of the gadget blog world!

    I don't know about an iPhone 3G on Orange but I know of one iPhone 3G that's going to be on Three UK soon enough ;)
    • ^
    • v
    I (for one...) would be very interested to hear how you get on switching it to Three, what O2 services you lose and your overall verdict.

    Once you've polished the screen and washed your hands, of course! :)
    • ^
    • v
    The whole real point of the 3g was to be mass market where the first one wasn't. The killer feature wasn't gps or any of that rubbish, it was the price. Apple wants as many people as possible to have one. It fears that if the iphone doesn't become as ubiquitous as the ipod then its music and ipod revenues are seriously threatened by converged devices and, a year or two after that, mass market networked music services.

    So, if the point of the 3g was to be truly mass market, exclusive contracts with networks and retailers make no sense whatsoever. And if you're really after as many customers as possible you need to be in play for christmas. October / November would make sense - the first iphone was launched in the UK on November the 9th, and exclusivity agreements are generally either time bound (e.g. 12 months) or connect with a point in the product roadmap (e.g. "exclusive until version 3")
    • ^
    • v
    Apple afraid of converged devices? Proof please (and analysts don't count).

    Apple's iPod sales as a % of previous quarters have fallen of late, but that is mainly because they sold spectacularly well for the last few years, so the only way is down if the devices then last 4-5 years. I mean, 80GB is more than most people will ever own, so why upgrade?

    iPods are a commodity. The mobile phone as MP3 player is still a pretty abysmal experience, and despite rantings to the contrary by - surprise - the vendors, people are actually quite happy with different devices that are good at one thing. No-one is begging for convergence between video camera / still camera / SatNav / MP3 player & phone except the uber-geeks, and that's only so they can brag to their mates at the juice bar. Just because you can cram 16GB (pah!) into a phone, doesn't mean people want it to be their music device. Ditto navigation, or images/video.

    Yes, Many zillions of photos are now taken on cameraphones. Most get deleted, they are of largely crap quality and are difficult to share/print. Handset as satnav is hopeless, even if there were a market for LBS (which there clearly isn't. Read Tomi Ahonen before replying to that one)

    Mass-market network unicast music services don't scale, commercially or technically. Ever. For either upload to the vault, or download to listen. End of short story.

    All these supposed converged services eat huge amounts of battery life, which is hopeless for then using your phone as a, er, phone. The public are smarter than the geeks. They don't carry a 2nd device for when their N95 goes flat 2hrs into the day due to using GPS/WiFi/MP3. No, they have a TomTom or Garmin in the car, they have a digicam in the glovebox, and an iPod in the backpack. If any of these devices go flat, no big deal. But if their mobile goes flat, it's a disaster.

    Apple want more i3G's out there because the conversion rate from PC to Mac among iPhone users should increase once they see how nice the iphone is, and the multimedia/PIM benefits you unlock by moving to Mac.
    • ^
    • v
    Hi Mike,

    No proof - just my opinion as someone with some cash tied up in this area. I agree with you on the lack of appeal of converged devices - I have a tom tom stashed in my glove box, an ipod in my jacket, an n95 in one pocket and a blackberry in the other. My own view is that apple feel compelled to make a big move into the phone space as a defence against phones moving into the ipod space. I'm sure there are other views and I'm sure they're all equally valid. At the end of the day it all comes down to the money, no? :)

    We could argue the toss on LBS, music services... time will tell - but irrespective of the reason why apple want to take the iphone mass market, the fact remains that they do. And because of that, I think it's unlikely that we'll see the iphone locked into a single network and two / three retailers for another christmas in the UK.
    • ^
    • v
    Agree re exclusivity. We'll see.

    I don't think you can argue over LBS and music services, because the hard facts are that these are not being taken up by the masses. Even among smartphone owners their use is not stellar. And when you look at what 'success' would entail, the laws of physics say that the spectrum and power available to mobile networks cannae take it cap'n.

    We lucky few who care not about bills and have devices for Africa will continue to predict mass market uptake. The masses will continue to annoyingly resist our predictions.

    Weren't we supposed to be flying everywhere in hovercars and wearing self-cleaning clothes by now?

    /m
    • ^
    • v
    Well, there are regular Zeppelin flights over London these days and I put my clothes in a basket in the bedroom and they are automatically cleaned and returned to the hanger... it's true Mike, we're living in the future!
    • ^
    • v
    Yeeeeeesss...and I have a hands-free, voice-activated search function built into my house:

    "Oi! where's all the sodding <insert domestic consumable here> gone?"

    Back to Mono then...
 

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