Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on August 26, 2008 – 10:45 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Despite their incredibly inefficient way of selling the iPhone - 6-hours waiting times and shop-assistants who sell to their friends first - T-Mobile has sold 120,000 of those shine objects since July 11th. T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhavan gives a simple reason for the distribution problems. “Our (sales) expectations were surpassed,” he told Reuters. Of these 120,000 phones, 75,000 phones were sold in Germany.
I’m actually surprised by these somewhat low numbers. Especially in Germany, home of 82 million people, one would expect to sell more than just one phone per 1100 people. Even in the first six weeks. Akhavan told Reuters that the distribution had hit a snag due to its wide-spread launch in 22 countries.
The Dutch have always been famous for their critical and direct attitude. Well, T-Mobile won’t deny this. Since they haven’t received complains from Austrian and German users, but they did from Dutch users. Typical…
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Written on July 11, 2008 – 5:54 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Your blogger waisted six hours of his life on a friggin’ phone today. The only Dutch operator that offers the iPhone 3G couldn’t handle (Dutch link) the data load the activation process required. The result? Every single iPhone had to be registered by calling up the T-Mobile headquarters. When you take in account that all the iPhone-selling stores had to do this, you won’t be surprised to hear that waiting times to get a hold of a T-Mobile HQ employee were as long as 80 minutes. That crisis resulted in a very bizarre daily schedule for me:
The line at T-Mobile store, hope you dig my yellow shoes
7 am: Getting up - jumping on my bicycle to go to Amsterdam’s largest T-Mobile Store in the Kalverstraat.
7.30 am: Arriving at the store, a forty-year old Apple fanboy hands me a coffee. There are around 30 people waiting.
8 am: Store manager hands out numbers, there are only 35 iPhones available. Just enough for the people who are already waiting. I have number 24.
9.30 am: Store opens: first lucky seven enter the store.
9.35 am: System crashes. From now on it takes around 90 minutes per customer.
11.00 am: Most of the people who were part of the first round have left the store. 28 people and I realize we’re here for quite a while. Especially as T-Mobile employees help out four friends who have just arrived. When customers tell the store manager this, he acts like he has no idea of what’s going on.
12.15 pm: The store manager now makes the same mistake and helps out a friend of his. He then disappears.
1.00 pm: Finally! There’s my number. Let’s buy that shiny object.
1.45 pm: I’m lucky since the guy who sells my iPhone manages to reach T-Mobile HQ pretty fast. It only took me thirty minutes to buy the phone. Pity that I had to wait for five hours and thirty minutes to do so.
British O2 operator has also failed
O2 also suffered from technical glitches - causing waiting lines of 90 minutes. Mobile Computer interviewed visitors no. 2 and 3 at the London Regent Street Apple Store - who left early because the whole buying process took to long:
Update: there’s a new gadget around, called the iBrick.
Written on June 16, 2008 – 9:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Believe it or not, Germans can buy the brand new 3G iPhone 8 GB version for only 1 euro - and a fat T-Mobile contract. To be exact: users have to sign up for a monthly 69-euro service plan. By doing this, Apple probably wants the early majority to pick up the iPhone in a dazzling speed as a lot of teenagers and twenty-somethings can’t resist such a low price.
Operators like T-Mobile can easily subsidize the phones, as long consumers sign for a very lucrative contract. The 16-gigabyte version will start at 19.95 euros with an all-inclusive data plan costing 89 euros per month going up to 249.95 euros for a minimal 29 euros-per-month contract.
I wonder how many of the shiny phones they’ll ship in. One thing is for sure.. “Is that an iPhone…?” will soon be history.
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