Comments on: UK: Update: how busy were the shops selling the iPhone 3GS today?

By: SharonW

SharonW — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:56:51 +0000

Cost is obviously an issue in light of the considerable additional amount over the newbie price that upgraders would have to pay. I’m sure most current owners came to the conclusion that they’ll be satisfied enough with the 3.0 upgrade until their AT&T contracts put them in the subsidy upgrade zone.

Curiously, since the phone is being offered in 8 countries and analysts speculate that 500,000 will be sold this weekend, simple math (but obviously not properly percentaged out by country math) would come out to approximately 62,000 iPhones sold per country, putting the iPhone 3GS on par with first weekend sales for the Pre in the U.S. where sales are believed to be around 100,000.

I’d say, set and match at this point.

By: Jack

Jack — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:14:52 +0000

I work at a Rogers store in Canada and must say that this launch brought nowhere near as much excitement as the 3G did. The store was relatively quiet for most of the day and we still have the 3GS in stock. There were no lineups and no mobs of Apple fanboys this time. In fact i didn’t even sell one yesterday and sold about 15 other phones. Customers just aren’t interested in a phone that costs an insane amount of money and only now does what every other decent smartphone on the market can do.

By: JonH

JonH — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:52:44 +0000

Also .. you said “Somewhat strangely, the rest of the shopping centre was buzzing and busy, so why these two shops were seemingly more quiet than usual” .. Do you spend a lot of time hanging around the o2 shop and studying customer flow?

By: JonH

JonH — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:50:26 +0000

Are there actually any facts in your post? This is probably the least scientific assessment I have ever read. Pure speculation not even based on any proper research. I’m no fanboy and I am not defending O2 in any way (they are money grabbing swines and CPW are no better) but at least do some proper research. Did you get there early enough to see if there was a queue? What time did you visit the stores? Which stores did you visit – you only say local? Do you live in a particularly downtrodden and recession hit area of the UK?

The other thing that nobody seems to have mentioned is that Apple announced and released this product within the same pay-month. I would imagine that some people did not have the funds to hand as previously Apple have announced in June and launched in July, giving potential customers a pay-day in between. This probably has a lot to do with the somewhat slower sales.

By: Pachi

Pachi — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:55:55 +0000

I think the USA was the only place that people line the iPhone.