iPhone No Longer Available in UK

[mr1970]

Nonsense

For the phone to really take off, the 3G version must be available across multiple carriers, on both pay monthly, and pay as you go.

But I, like a lot of people, will not pay £250+ for a phone, AND £35+ a month for a contract I simply don't need.

Doug

Let's try this another way. For the Macbook to really take off, it needs to be made out of crappier materials, fall to bits after 3 years and cost £350. That way they'll be able to take on Acer.

No-one needs an iPhone. Many people, however, WANT an iPhone. I did, and I coughed up on the second day it was available in this country. I've owned many, many mobile phones in the last 12 years and the iPhone is a genuinely game-changing device. I loved my Nokia 8110 (the "banana phone" in the Matrix); I loved my Nokia 8210 as it was the first phone which comfortably fitted a jeans pocket. I loved my Motorola Razr for the form factor & style, but the iPhone is just a huge leap forward in terms of ease of use, staggering UI, mini-apps (stock prices, weather etc), iPod functionality and all the rest. The lack of 3G or a task list mean it's not perfect (in fact the lack of a task list for an ostensibly "smart" phone is utterly inexcusable) but it has moved the game on by a margin that no other phone I've ever seen has done.

For that level of performance, therefore, Apple are entirely right to charge what the market will accommodate.

I wanted a laptop - there were many cheaper options but I bought a 12" Powerbook because I wanted the best.
My partner wanted a "home" laptop - there were many cheaper options but she bought a Macbook
I wanted the best music player in the world - I bought an iPod (three times)
I wanted the best phone in the world...you get the point.

The funny thing is, I wouldn't even describe myself as a "fanboy" - when I was looking for a laptop I looked at Vaio, IBM, Toshiba, Dell XPS and all the rest, but the Apple blew them away. Similarly, I looked at Creative and other music players, and after the user experience with the Razr I swore I'd never use anything but Nokia ever again. But in every case, the Apple product was just plain better, and by a margin I was willing to pay for.

What's concerning me more about this story is that I signed an 18 month contract with O2, so if there's a new one coming out 6 months into that period they better let me upgrade (even if it's for a fee). Will be very, very disappointed if they don't.

 

[sananda]

Surely the bottom line which is there aren't any iPhones for sale via these store, is a bad situation to be in as some people will just buy something else? I don't see how it benefits anyone, especially given the recent sales boost the platform has had.

i think that's right. people who post here will wait for a new model, but those who do not follow apple news will just think one day they might like to buy an iphone, go into an o2 or cpw shop to attempt to buy one, get turned away, and then just buy something else which could easily be on another network (as they will most likely buy based on price comparison). those who found another network cheaper will be lost to o2 for another 12 or 18 months.

so, it seems strange to me that they are turning away contract business.

 

[yetanotherdave]

We all know ATT got a 5 year exclusivity deal, does anyone know if O2 has similar? It may help answer a lot of these questions...

 

[sananda]

We all know ATT got a 5 year exclusivity deal, does anyone know if O2 has similar? It may help answer a lot of these questions...

if i remember correctly at the launch matthew key (o2 ceo) said it was a multi-year agreement. which doesn't really tell us how many years or whether the exclusivity operates in every year of the agreement.

 

[Stig McNasty]

Interesting idea. However, if Vodafone had the iPhone I wouldn't be leaving them (after 10 years) for O2. If several other people leave their carriers for the iPhone then that's real money lost.

This is a very important factor. It costs phone companies a lot to gain new customers, so offering the latest greatest in order to retain existing customers is worth taking a hit on the handset.

 

[phelix_da_kat]

Control of stock

Well, I think the Apple store has a "better" control of its stock and less lag with its suppliers (while O2 has to probably request stock from Apple).

This way, Apple store can still "offer" the 8/16G iPhone to its customers and when the 3G iPhone comes out - they just "send" the customer the 3G version (as they do when you order computers and a "new" revision comes out even though you ordered the "previous" revision).

 

[BongoBanger]

I think people are missing two important points and jumping to wrong conclusions as a result:

1) O2 have quoted this as their fastest selling phone. This actually means nothing since they were the sole carrier and the iPhone had a known early adopter fanbase. Since the initial peak sales have been pretty poor which meant that they had to stimulate sales by improving the (awful) tarrifs.

2) The iPhone has not sold that well. There was a second peak of demand for 8GB models when O2 reduced the price of the model to a point where it just about broke even but overall it's not been heavily adopted in the UK - certainly not to the same extent as, say, the SE walkman series and the Nokia N series have. As has been pointed out the models sold after the cut had v1.1.2 firmware installed which indicates that they were models bought for a Christmas rush that never actually happened.

So this has nothing to do with supply chain or anything else. O2 merely ordered too much stock and now have to clear it before a revised model comes out, hence they will just run down what they have left in reserve and will not place new orders.

In other words, it looks like Voda UK and Orange were right to walk away from distributing the iPhone in the UK on the grounds that it wouldn't be profitable to do so under Apple's revenue sharing model. O2 have kind of learned this the hard way.

 

[AndyR]

Just popped in to my local O2 store and asked the sales guy if they have any iPhones in stock.

He went away and came back 5 mins later. No 8gb and only a couple 16Gb...

Tut tut...Apple this is poor, your going to loose sales.

 

[OllyW]

For that level of performance, therefore, Apple are entirely right to charge what the market will accommodate.

It was too expensive (in the UK) for "the market".

O2 had to improve the tarrifs and then drop the price by £100 to get sales moving.

 

[BongoBanger]

Sounds like a pretty bizarre practice to me. Even if they didn't sell many iPhones online, each one sold is money in the pocket.

Not if you're selling at a loss it isn't.

What might be more possible: Apple makes a certain amount of money for every iPhone bought at an Apple store or online, and a certain smaller amount of money for every iPhone bought at O2. Apple knows they cannot handle the complete UK phone market, they need partners, that's why O2 is selling them even though it is less profit than Apple selling the phones. When O2 dumped the iPhones at bargain prices, that changed the balance. Obviously this reduced Apple's own sales and therefore reduced the total profit. The O2 partnership was based on a calculation what Apple's average profit would be, and that didn't take into account a partner dumping the phones. As a result, Apple might be a bit slow shipping more products to O2.

Which might be true if O2 hadn't first had to better their tarrifs and CPW hadn't also dropped their prices.

This is excess inventory clearance, nothing more.

 

[cal6n]

We all know ATT got a 5 year exclusivity deal, does anyone know if O2 has similar? It may help answer a lot of these questions...

if i remember correctly at the launch matthew key (o2 ceo) said it was a multi-year agreement. which doesn't really tell us how many years or whether the exclusivity operates in every year of the agreement.

Does no-one remember the rumour at launch, to the effect that the agreements applied specifically to the EDGE enabled iPhones?

Once the 3G version is released, expect to see Apple UK selling unlocked iPhones at "full price" and O2 and Craphone Warehouse selling a subsidised, locked version. It's just how the mobile phone market works in Britain and no amount of Californian wishful-thinking, or Jobsian RDF, is going to change that.

 

[mrat93]

My guess is they discontinued the phone early so when the new iPhone comes out, everybody will be past their return date. How long is O2's return date. If it's 30 days, then it might make sense. Let's see if Apple stops selling them on the 26th.

 

[sananda]

Does no-one remember the rumour at launch, to the effect that the agreements applied specifically to the EDGE enabled iPhones?

i've never bought those rumours. o2 aren't complete fools. they knew there was a 3G iphone coming (jobs specifically said so when introducing iphone which was prior to the agreement with o2) and would be unlikely to have agreed to a multi-year agreement only for EDGE phones.

by the way the agreement with france telecom, is for three years and covers all iphone models.

 

[gnasher729]

Not if you're selling at a loss it isn't.

You are not thinking this through. If I have a dozen phones that I paid £100 for, and I find it hard to sell them, you say stopping to sell them is better than selling them for £80 each. I would set the prize to £120; every one I sell is cash in my pocket. If people don't buy them, it's no worse than stopping to sell.

 

[Cleverboy]

so, the question becomes... is Apple really going to stop selling the iPhone altogether in the UK for the next 4 weeks?

I suppose sales probably dwindled down anyway, but it's still surprising they let it get to 0.

arn

Surprising, but considering its initially LOW UK sales figures and the generally lackluster pace of sales (until the recent price slashes/subsidies), its concievable that Apple would rather take over 1 month of "waiting customers" in exchange for a built-in CLAMOR of customers for the new 3G version... then sell 2G phones at a heavy discount, perpetuating an unflattering value perception until just prior to the new phone launch.

They might replenish, but I can't see how that trade off doesn't make sense. Sure, some folks might just buy other phones, but I think most people know what's coming... and that its worth the short wait.

~ CB

 

[Iggy]

Hmmmm. There weren't any in New York last week either. Two Apple stores were completely sold out.

 

[scharf10]

http://stuff.tv/News/O2-iPhones-out-of-stock/9989/

As soon as I saw this news I thought to head over to stuff.tv who have contacted 02.

The key paragraph being:

However, O2 tells us that in fact the 16GB iPhone was merely "temporarily out of stock in our online store this morning". They assure us that they are "replenishing stock of the 16GB iPhone and customers wishing to purchase through our online store will be able to shortly". In the meantime the 16GB iPhone is still available in their high street stores.

What this means as a bigger picture I'm not 100% sure, but interesting to read nonetheless.

Scharf

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Is it just me, or has this not been fully thought through?

Leaving a over a months gap. Most people are going to think that it is no longer available at all, not just being replaced in June/July.

This is a bad idea.

I agree completely.

 

[LxTxNx]

Correct, expecting a 3G iPhone ANY moment now!

I'm sooooooo glad I sold mine yesterday for $400... I did include Care and a Case LOL


3G iPhone come to papa!!!

 

[Swinny]

The key bit from that Stuff article for me is "Quite who decided to put "iPhone no longer available" instead of "temporarily out of stock" on the website, we don't know"...

Whatever is going on (most likely dwindling stock before something new arrives in 4/5 weeks), that wording is utterly daft. To the average, non-techy, non-rumour-site-reading consumer out there that pretty much says "you can no longer buy an iPhone from O2"...and the consumer in turn says "oh, right, well off to Vodafone for a free N95 then".

If you go into a shop and ask if they have something in stock (in this situation), you'd expect to be told "we are currently out of stock, but hopefully within a few weeks will have more in" - and the potential customer walks away frustrated, but in many cases likely to hang on a few more weeks and return...if that same customer gets told "they aren't available any more", they just think thats that and go and look elsewhere for another device.

 

[krye]

I think the title should be "iPhone SOLD OUT in the UK". saying they are "no longer available" makes it sound like Apple pulled out. My heart almost skipped a beat!

 

[IscariotJ]

i've never bought those rumours. o2 aren't complete fools. they knew there was a 3G iphone coming (jobs specifically said so when introducing iphone which was prior to the agreement with o2) and would be unlikely to have agreed to a multi-year agreement only for EDGE phones.

by the way the agreement with france telecom, is for three years and covers all iphone models.

I hope that isn't the case with O2. I'm ready to replace two handsets, but there's no way that I'm going back to O2. Just give me it unlocked...

 

[dicklacara]

so, the question becomes... is Apple really going to stop selling the iPhone altogether in the UK for the next 4 weeks?

I suppose sales probably dwindled down anyway, but it's still surprising they let it get to 0.

arn

Mmmmm....

There's something(s) strange going on here:

1) Rumors of June/July 3G
2) Rumors of lots of new countries & multiple carriers per
3) Rumors of sale of Apple-approved unlocked iPhone sales
4) New features specific for China, Japan
5) Apple says they are on sched to sell 10 mil iPhones in 2008
6) Analysts estimate 14+ mil in 2008
7) YTD 2008 sales 2-3 mill doesn't compute

now, current carriers are fire-sale & EOLing current models.

Here's what I think:

1) Apple's carrier-exclusivity agreements outside US are different than US-ATT-- shorter time, per model, more flexible, etc.
2) Outside US, no delay for FCC approval
3) iPhone 3G not necessarily tied to 2.0

meaning...

iPhone 2.5/3G will be released outside US, first, say next week, with a simultaneous multi-country Blitz!

Later, say June 29, US release with FCC approval.

Later, when 2.0 is available, it is update to all


This does several things:

1) Tells the world that the iPhone is an ubiquitous world phone, not just a US phone with a few foreign outlets
2) Throws down the gauntlet to the competition-- "ours is better then yours, now & available everywhere that counts... and wait'll you see 2.0"
3) Puts Apple on track to [wildly] exceed 2008 iPhone sales goals
4) Pisses off US customers like me-- but we understand the reasoning, FFC delay, and the overall benefit

 

[BongoBanger]

You are not thinking this through. If I have a dozen phones that I paid £100 for, and I find it hard to sell them, you say stopping to sell them is better than selling them for £80 each. I would set the prize to £120; every one I sell is cash in my pocket. If people don't buy them, it's no worse than stopping to sell.

Well, no because you assume that people will pay £120 for them when you might actually have to reduce the price to £100 - or even £80 - to stimulate demand. You've not stopped selling them - if you have to lose £20 on each unit that's still better than losing £100 - you're just not going to compound your losses by ordering more stock.

 

[mr1970]

Now that's a fair point

It was too expensive (in the UK) for "the market".

O2 had to improve the tarrifs and then drop the price by £100 to get sales moving.

Can't argue with that. The market did accommodate it but not in the volumes they wanted. Maybe it was just too much of a stretch to hope that a market which has been used to getting the latest & greatest phone for free (can't remember the last time I paid for one - can you?) would cough almost 300 quid.

The multi-network issue is interesting too. I was very happy with Orange for many years - so much so that when I left for the iPhone they offered me a Nokia N95 AND an iPod free if I stayed! - so I'd rather not have gone to O2, but the phone was just too good. Can't imagine why anyone would go to O2 if it wasn't for the iPhone.