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iPhone UK Sales Reach 1 Million Mark

Willis said:
when you consider that there has been 10 million iPhones sold worldwide, 1 million in the UK alone is a huge number
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Also means 1 out of every 60 people has an iPhone, I'm sure there's bigger statistics for other Nokia phones, but if you think that this is Apples 1st and 2nd phone, EVER, it's a pretty good statistic.
 
I'm not surprised the number is as high as it is. Looking at it from a very narrow point of view - I have an iPhone, i've personally (successfully) plugged the iPhone to 3 friends who've each bought one. I know another 5 or 6 people with iPhone's and know of another couple planning to buy one in the very near future. And that's just in an immediate circle of friends and co-workers.

If they got to the point where the iPhone was free on contract with O2 I reckon their market penetration would go through the roof.
 
abrooks said:
I'll second that.
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My girlfriend got my old 1st Gen iphone when we moved to Newcastle because the reception was better than what she was getting with her Orange phone. She hadn't been interested in it before because it was "too technical" and it had been lying in its box for a couple of months. Now she trawls the App Store for free games all the time and she recommends the iPhone to everyone.
 
yetanotherdave said:
That's pretty incredible market penetration - especially when hampered by O2's lousy coverage compared to the like of Vodafone.
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Ever used 3 Mobile? Ironically, it uses 02's network, but the signal is simply appalling. In my house, I get a better 02 signal than I ever did with 3 Mobile
 
Neerazan said:
It is unlikely that many people put their old iPhones in a desk drawer when they upgraded, and O2 offer a pay as you go sim-only pack for such a circumstance.
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This sounds like just what i need. Can you tell me more details? Does it include a data plan?
 
sjo said:
to give you some reference point, nokia n95 was introduced in uk in march 2007, and passed 1m mark on november 2007. so that's about 8-9 months, vs iphone 16 months.
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Whilst that statistic that clearly indicates the N95 is 2x more successful and popular than the iPhone in the UK I don't think that tells the whole story. I also don't think it gives an accurate indicator of how well Apple and Nokia respectively are positioned to take advantage of the expanding smart phone market in the future.

Nokia established its name for mobile phones decades before Apple entered the market and have huge market share in all of Europe, no less so than in the UK.

For Apple to reach the 1m with their first two revisions of iPhone and establish a new platform in 16 months is impressive. Throw in iPod touch sales (not an iPhone, but still the OS X mobile wifi platform) and those 1m N95s in 16 don't look so good after all.
 
wolfie37 said:
Where do you get your information from, O2's coverage is excellent, it's the reason why I have stuck with them whilst colleagues on Orange, Vodafone and other networks struggle for consistent service across the country.
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Personal experience. Wherever we go (Bristol area mainly) I am either on a very weak signal or out of service, where my wife's phone on vodafone always has at least 4 bars of 3g. Inside buildings like shops seems to be especially bad compared to Vodafone.

According to O2's map, I am in a good 3g area, I have a GPRS only connection.
 
yetanotherdave said:
Personal experience. Wherever we go (Bristol area mainly) I am either on a very weak signal or out of service, where my wife's phone on vodafone always has at least 4 bars of 3g. Inside buildings like shops seems to be especially bad compared to Vodafone.

According to O2's map, I am in a good 3g area, I have a GPRS only connection.
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OK so seems to be a local issue where you are, I just know from travelling around the country I find that my O2 coverage is better than anyone with Vodafone and especially Orange.
 
Imagine how many they would sell if they dropped the rapacious monthly charges.
 
Malcster said:
The N95 was free on most contracts though, the original iPhone was £279 (500ish dollars) That would make most people (apart from apple nutjobs like me) think twice ;)
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The average person who still wants to exchange videos with friends via bluetooth, set anything they want as a ring tone, send the odd multimedia message while having access to their email and a mobile web brower wouldn't touch an iPhone with all it's feature restrictions and DRM if they had the choice of the N95, N96 etc...

I'm on a Nokia 6800 still and even though I love my mac and I love my iPod, my next phone will definitely be something from the N9* series of Nokia phones, not an iPhone. Unless there's an iPhone 3 at some stage that corrects all the short-comings of the platform. A lot of people in the UK that are too used to the functionality that smart phone's have offered for over 5 years now are going to be choosing something from Nokia or Sony
 
wolfie37 said:
Where do you get your information from, O2's coverage is excellent, it's the reason why I have stuck with them whilst colleagues on Orange, Vodafone and other networks struggle for consistent service across the country.
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Their 3G coverage is really awful where I am (in London) - it'll be full bars one minute and then I'll walk about 100 metres and it'll just drop or revert to GPRS (no EDGE in between). Needless to say cellular isn't *awesome* for streaming radio for me!

I was with 3 with my mobile and mobile broadband for years before getting my iPhone and they had pretty much constant 3G wherever I went :(

I love Wi-Fi.
 
kdarling said:
We have to factor in that the sales number counts the original model as well.

In the US, at least, quite a few of the 3G sales were to original owners. In other words, quite a lot of sales were to the same person.

So the percentage by population is less, perhaps much less, than figured above... though still respectable.
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Yes, but in the UK the original did not come out until end of November 2007 remember, 5 months later than the US, and a mere 7 months or so before the new version. It was also so much more expensive (£269/£329 instead of free) that not many people bought it. Most UK iPhone sales will have been 3G models.
 
armhol said:
This sounds like just what i need. Can you tell me more details? Does it include a data plan?
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You can pick up a pay as you go sim from any O2 store as far as I know... All you can eat data is £10 a month, and since I'm still in contract on my other phone, that's all I use it for at present.

In answer to the varied complaints about mobile network coverage from various UK providers, the issue is no longer the area of coverage so much as the bandwidth available. This means you can be stood pretty much on top of one of their masts and still get dropped calls because of the number of phones attempting to use that mast. This said, the more rural bits of the UK I visit tend to have crappy 3G!
 
Objectively according to Ofcom O2's 3G coverage is the weakest by coverage of the population of any of the mobile networks, though there isn't a great deal in it to be frank.

The amount of network errors I have on Edge with my O2 iPhone is somewhat depressing, and I'd find it hard to believe anyone else would be as bad.

Phazer
 
armhol said:
This sounds like just what i need. Can you tell me more details? Does it include a data plan?
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just to give you another option... i sold my old iphone for £230 in december on eBay, in essence i pretty much got paid to upgrade to the 3G!! :)
 
1 millions in the UK is a pretty big number! as said, 1 in every 60 people.... but that includes babies, toddlers, the very old... so reallly i'd say its more like 1/45 phone users. That's pretty impressive if you ask me, considering apple dont have a long chain of phones.
 
Regarding coverage, I agree that O2's 3G coverage is pretty unimpressive. However, for the basic stuff, like just making a phone call, they seem one of the best. My wife's company recently ported en-masse over from O2 to Vodafone. They're now porting people back to O2, such has been the volume of complaints about Vodafone's service. On a regular 120 mile journey using major roads, her Vodafone would lose signal entirely several times. We don't lose O2 service once over that entire journey.
 
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