Alex Kinch

The website of Alex Kinch, live from London

O2 to get UK iPhone gig

Posted by Alex on Jul 5, 2007 • (Comments)

Link: BBC NEWS | Business | O2 ‘to get iPhone contract in UK’

The BBC are reporting this morning that O2 are about to sign an exclusive contract for selling the iPhone in the UK, with the handsets in stores ready for Christmas. Funnily enough an O2 spokesman “declined to comment on the reports”.

The agreement with O2 is reported to include Apple receiving a continuing share of the revenue generated for the network operator.

The handsets are expected to be sold for about £300 and O2 will be hoping that the lure of the fashionable phone is enough to win customers from rival networks.

Update: O2 have denied they’ve got the iPhone gig. See this blog entry for more details.

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Tagged as , , + Categorized as Mobile News, Mobile Industry Review
  • adey
    if youre like me and think its a rip off dont buy one! if there were less mugs in the uk trying to impress their mates even if it means being ripped off by large companies, maybe these large firms wouldnt take the piss out of us
  • planetf1
    I'll second Ben's comment - unbelievable that O2 have yet to pull their finger out and offer a decent data addon. Hopefully they will shortly with this potential announcement.

    Oh and we're not talking about a 45 pcm tariff for 30Mb or something. I'm more talking about really enabling the mobile internet (remember the O2 adverts for the mobile web years ago) so something like 3's X-Series silver @5pcm.
  • Heh... I don't know who these Apple people think they are, either, but they're doing exactly that, getting away with it and all the operators are bending backwards to get the exclusive...

    That's branding for you (what Nokia had at one point, by the way, and blew it by releasing 23.654 different models every 2 weeks...).
  • Ben Smith
    Setting feelings on Apple and the iPhone aside (OK, hands up, I do have a weakness for their toys) might this be good news for existing O2 customers - a sign that they're finally going to pull their fingers out and deliver a half-way decent data network and unlimited consumer tariff...?
  • Do Nokia, Motorola or SE et al get a share of the ongoing revenue from all the global networks!? Who the hell do Apple think they are that they bring out one handset in a world of thousands and think that they are going to have network operators clammering to give revenue share to them...all for one handset.

    If I were an O2 shareholder I'd be a bit miffed about this model. And frankly I don't believe it is sustainable...as soon as O2, etc are presented with iPhone alternatives (which are bound to be cheaper) they will dump Apple pronto...

    The iPhone is good, but not that good...and it is copyable...very copyable indeed. iPhones will help O2 win a few customers at Christmas, but by April next year the other networks will be offering a handset very very similar to an iPhone, and for free on a standard monthly tariff...in fact I would fall about laughing at O2 if another network offered an iPhone-look-a-like on PAYG.

    steve/itagg.com
  • Barry O'Connell
    When you think about it... this makes a lot of sense really. One would have to be a mug to fork out sticker price (unsubsidised) for a phone that came locked to a network with a minimum contract. By the same token one would have to be a mug to pay o2 data prices. Isn't the iPhone data heavy too? What does that leave us with? Mug^2 ?
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