Deutsche Telekom Sold 70,000 iPhones in 11 Weeks

[MacRumors]

Deutsche Telekom announced (via MacNotes.de) on Saturday that they had sold 70,000 iPhones in the 11 weeks following its launch in November.

This represents a much smaller number of iPhones sold as compared to the 70,000 iPhone sales in 1 month in France. Despite this, the head of T-Mobile Germany states that "the iPhone is by far the most sold multimedia device in T-Mobile's portfolio."

The German launch of the iPhone was marred by a legal battle, in which Vodafone won a temporary injunction against T-Mobile from selling the iPhone without an unlocked option. This injunction was later overturned. At Macworld, Apple announced that 4 million iPhones had been sold worldwide, and they are confident about reaching their 10 million goal by the end of 2008.

Article Link

[timmillwood]

I think the price and lack of common features is putting off Europe buyers, but I still bought one this weekend, and I love it.

Would really like 3G, but I can wait.

[tjcampbell]

I love my iPhone, but I don't know why Steve Jobs didn't investigate further into the European consumer before bringing his device to the EU.

The average customer is presented with a free phone here on a great tariff or an expensive iPhone on a crap tariff. It's not rocket science as to what the masses will choose.

[zacksilverman]

Hey, hope someone can clarify something for me. is the 10 million iphone goal from june 07 - dec 08 or is it from jan 08 - dec 08.

thanks

Zack

[psychofreak]

The second the 3G iPhone gets unlocked for regular O2 contracts I'll likely get one.

[bigandy]

Originally Posted by zacksilverman

Hey, hope someone can clarify something for me. is the 10 million iphone goal from june 07 - dec 08 or is it from jan 08 - dec 08.

I'd assume June 07 - December 08. Jobs did say "we want to sell 10m before the end of 2008".

[voodoofish]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

"the iPhone is by far the most sold multimedia device in T-Mobile's portfolio."

I wonder how they define multimedia device? Presumably they could define it however they want to make sure the iPhone is the number one device in that category!

[colewave]

Apple has tons of room to cut the price on the iphone to spur sales. Everyone, and I mean everyone, I know wants one, but they are all waiting for one reason or another:

- In contract with a different provider
- Waiting on version 2 and 3g
- Waiting for a cheaper price

What this tells me is that iphone sales will be huge in the long run. As the price goes down and the feature set goes up, more and more people will make the jump.

[peestandingup]

Originally Posted by voodoofish

I wonder how they define multimedia device? Presumably they could define it however they want to make sure the iPhone is the number one device in that category!

Basically. Pretty much any phones these days will play music, browse the internet, etc so are those "multimedia devices" too? And does this include "smartphones"??

Originally Posted by colewave

Apple has tons of room to cut the price on the iphone to spur sales. Everyone, and I mean everyone, I know wants one, but they are all waiting for one reason or another:

- In contract with a different provider
- Waiting on version 2 and 3g
- Waiting for a cheaper price

What this tells me is that iphone sales will be huge in the long run. As the price goes down and the feature set goes up, more and more people will make the jump.

Cell phones are a fickle market. What's hot one day isn't hot the next.

[twoodcc]

glad to hear that the germans are impressed with how it's selling over there.

[petvas]

Germany is very different in consumer behaviour than the USA. People her don't want to spend so much money to get a mobile phone. The main reasons for the low sales are:

• The price
• the price models of T-Mobile. The cheapest contract you get is 49€ monthly and that is too much for most people. The price for a call per minute is also expensive
• People don't want a two year contract. It should be one year only.
• The lack of UMTS has certainly made people decide against the device
• T-Mobile/Apple didn't do a good job of promoting the iPhone here in Germany

[Phil A.]

Originally Posted by tjcampbell

I love my iPhone, but I don't know why Steve Jobs didn't investigate further into the European consumer before bringing his device to the EU.

The average customer is presented with a free phone here on a great tariff or an expensive iPhone on a crap tariff. It's not rocket science as to what the masses will choose.

I'm pretty sure Apple and Jobs were very aware of the European Market and I'm equally sure they set their expectations accordingly.
They couldn't bring the phone out in Europe heavily subsidised without annoying their US customers (which will probably be their biggest market) so their options would have been price it high and sell less in Europe, or not sell it at all.

I don't think the iPhone was ever intended as a mass market phone for people who don't really care about their phone as long as it costs nothing (or next to nothing) and makes calls / sends SMSs, but rather as a premium product to test the water and feed back into future developments.

[Chupa Chupa]

Originally Posted by zacksilverman

Hey, hope someone can clarify something for me. is the 10 million iphone goal from june 07 - dec 08 or is it from jan 08 - dec 08.

thanks

Zack

He meant from the June '07 U.S. launch until Dec 31 '08. Apple has already announced they've sold 4m phones worldwide as of this month, so clearly Apple will make the 10m number handily, even double handily if they announce a 3G iPhone this summer.

[AppleMojo]

Originally Posted by colewave

Apple has tons of room to cut the price on the iphone to spur sales. Everyone, and I mean everyone, I know wants one, but they are all waiting for one reason or another:

- In contract with a different provider
- Waiting on version 2 and 3g
- Waiting for a cheaper price

What this tells me is that iphone sales will be huge in the long run. As the price goes down and the feature set goes up, more and more people will make the jump.

I was going to mention the same thing. Most people that I know give one of those reasons for not yet owning one and will soon have their hands on one.

Some tech-people that I do business with, won't buy one as its an Apple product, but that is just ignorance.

I don't own one yet, been a professional Blackberry user for quite some time. However, as soon as more applications arrive for the iPhone, I will make the switch.

[boss1]

I've been Pro Apple since middle school but I'm sorry, Apple has failed time after time oversees. To be fair I think that Apple 'gets' that what works in the US doesn't mean it works oversees.

However I really don't think Apple ever tried hard enough to incorporate those differences in how they market in other countries.


It's sad to say but this reminds of me of how bad AOL failed in Europe a decade ago because they tried to push that 29.95 per month for internet crap hoping Europeans would just roll over like we did here in the states.


Heck even products as iconic & broad as McDonalds burgers know enough that the restaurants service & style and the foods they serve have to "FIT" the culture/country they reside in.

[samab]

Originally Posted by bigandy

I'd assume June 07 - December 08. Jobs did say "we want to sell 10m before the end of 2008".

Steve Jobs said a lot of things.

He said that he wanted 1% of the world market --- but the problem is that the world market kept on expanding.

In January 2007 Keynote, he used 2006 sales figure which is 1 billion cell phone sold in 2006. But the worldwide cell phone market has grown to 1.1 billion cell phones sold in 2007.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...ellphones.html

By the end of 2008, the worldwide cell phone market will have grown to 1.25 billion cell phones.

[Glenny2lappies]

Originally Posted by boss1

Heck even products as iconic & broad as McDonalds burgers know enough that the restaurants service & style and the foods they serve have to "FIT" the culture/country they reside in.

That's a really good point. Lets face it, mobile phones aren't the same as computers, and people want very different things.

From my limited experience of travelling the world, there's a vast difference between the way mobiles are used in the US than in Europe (or even the UK:-). In the US, it's common to pay for incoming calls, but in Europe you only pay when roaming -- using the mobile in a different country. And thanks to the EU, this is capped at a sensible rate.

Also there's quite a few more mobile operators, albeit they're integrating.

Bottom line: it's too damn expensive and has too many missing features. Come the version 2 phone with 3G, I'm sure it'll be a completely different story.

I'm iPhone free. I'd love one. But I'm damned if I'm paying O2's ridiculously overpriced rates. It looks like the Germans are the same.

Finally; I'll wager that the 3G iPhones are first sold in Japan:-)

[em500]

I don't think the price of the device is much of a problem. After all, people are used to paying €299 for an iPod. But the T-Mobile contracts are truely aweful (yes also compared to German standards). €49 per month for 100 minutes and 40 sms is really a joke. Sure, it includes data and Wifi hotspots, but that won't give you anymore voice minutes, and after 100 minutes you're paying a whopping €0.29/min.

So realistically, people are going to look at the €69 and €89 plans, and then think it over, pondering how they're locked to this contract for 2 years (and in the mean time a 3G version will surely be available), and say, f*ck it, I'll get something else to tide me over, or I'll just get an unlocked one from eBay.

[nerdbert]

Originally Posted by voodoofish

I wonder how they define multimedia device? Presumably they could define it however they want to make sure the iPhone is the number one device in that category!

I assume by multimedia device they mean ordinary smartphones.

There are several points why it's a different game in Germany:

The contract terms T-Mobile offers for the iPhone are much worse than that of any other carrier offering the iPhone. With my unlocked iPhone I pay 20€ in Germany as opposed to 49 and the only difference is that I get 60 SMS *more* for it. (ok, there's one drawback: I only get 250 Mb of GPRS a month. I first thought this would be a limitation but then I realized that I hardly manage to use a 100 with an iPhone - same applies to a friend who has an official contract with T-Mobile. What's the point in calling it a flatrate if you can't even use up the cheapest volume based plan with this technology?)

People over here are not used to going online over mobile carriers. The reason is that frequencies were auctioned by the government and the carriers paid a whooping 50 billion euros for it. Of course they want their money back so when UMTS got public they charged incredible rates for it (hoping that it was the next revolution in this industry). Since companies love to maximize their profit they also charged the same price for GPRS and EDGE. Prices are quite low nowadays, but this pricing model has delayed progress in this area for around 6 years compared to other countries. People still look at me like I'm crazy when I read the news on some website while being in the subway.

Another aspect is that we just got rid of subsidized contracts. It's way cheaper to buy a mobile phone and get a normal contract over here. Plus your phone is not crippled by branding. The iPhone pricing model just came out when the trend was going in the opposite direction.

Last but not least many people got an iPhone from the States before it was released in Germany. I guess it applies to a lot of countries. Just been in a mall in Shanghai last autumn and they had hundreds of them in stock. The gap between att subscribers in the US and sold iPhones makes it pretty obvious.

[hithere]

I don't think the price is an issue too.

What Europeans don't like are locked phones. Even laws are there to limit this (in some countries) but Apple decided to go for a locked solutions. This generates uncertainty (will the iPhone I buy now be locked? legally unlockable?) and people postpone their purchases.

Problem is that the "wow" effect is important for a phone, and this does not last forever.

[Glenny2lappies]

Originally Posted by em500

I don't think the price of the device is much of a problem. After all, people are used to paying €299 for an iPod. But the T-Mobile contracts are truely aweful (yes also compared to German standards). €49 per month for 100 minutes and 40 sms is really a joke. Sure, it includes data and Wifi hotspots, but that won't give you anymore voice minutes, and after 100 minutes you're paying a whopping €0.29/min.

So realistically, people are going to look at the €69 and €89 plans, and then think it over, pondering how they're locked to this contract for 2 years (and in the mean time a 3G version will surely be available), and say, f*ck it, I'll get something else to tide me over, or I'll just get an unlocked one from eBay.

Absolutely.

For me the price of data roaming is just eye-wateringly awful: £7.50/€10/$14 per megabyte.

It's one thing for Apple to make money. This is greed.

[lamadude]

I thought about buying an iPhone but in the end I opted to keep my current 3G phone and buy an ipod touch. That should keep me going until the iphone 3G arrives.

[samab]

Originally Posted by hithere

What Europeans don't like are locked phones. Even laws are there to limit this (in some countries) but Apple decided to go for a locked solutions. This generates uncertainty (will the iPhone I buy now be locked? legally unlockable?) and people postpone their purchases.

The iphone's European launch has pretty much conclusively shot down all the illusions about simlocking laws in Europe.

Belgium is the only country in Europe that doesn't allow simlocking.

[lamadude]

Originally Posted by samab

The iphone's European launch has pretty much conclusively shot down all the illusions about simlocking laws in Europe.

Belgium is the only country in Europe that doesn't allow simlocking.

Yup which probably means us Belgians won't see the iPhone for a long time, such a shame, and the fact that we're sandwiched between the 3 countries that DO have the iPhone only makes it all the more painful ;-)

[samab]

Originally Posted by lamadude

Yup which probably means us Belgians won't see the iPhone for a long time, such a shame, and the fact that we're sandwiched between the 3 countries that DO have the iPhone only makes it all the more painful ;-)

Well, there are 2 cases going to the European Court of Justice (C-261/07 VTB-VAB NV v Total Belgium NV and C-299/07 Galatea BVBA v. Sanoma Magazines Belgium NV) that will decide whether Belgium's anti-bundling law violates EU consumer protection laws.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/...ogy/iphone.php