Yep, I’ve been out with my mobile device and it’s camera, and have been surveying the shops in the UK to see what they are aiming to sell us in the run up to Xmas this year. First, for part 1, are Orange and O2. What do the two (current) iPhone carriers have for us?
Orange
As you might be able to see, from the (admittedly) small pic, Orange are very happy to be selling the iPhone 3G(S) this Christmas. They were the next carrier to launch it after O2 (Vodafone should be bringing the pain in the New Year), and are making a bit of a thing of it! Good idea too, since the O2 shop where I was surveying was only 2 doors down! Orange stand alone in the carrier shops I checked the other day, because they were promoting a high(er) end handset (certainly in terms of cost) – whereas you’ll see the other carrier shops are all about the deals – speaking of which:
O2
As noted above, O2 (and other carrier shops) are all about the budget deals this Xmas – could this be solely due to the global recession, which hit the UK particularly hard? Probably. Does it make for very interesting shop window signage? No. Puzzlingly to me, there’s no mention of the iPhone and the Palm Pre, which may not deserve a large banner, but are a strong part of O2’s device portfolio – hey ho though, I’m not part of their product marketing team, am I? No.
Join me for part two of the carrier shops survey in the run up to Xmas, where I’ll have a quick nose around the shop fronting of T-Mobile and Vodafone….