As I said in my post yesterday, today I planned to go to the local shops for both O2 and Carphone Warehouse, and check out what the throng was like for the iPhone 3GS – you might (or might not) be surprised by the answer….
Let’s recap on yesterday (launch day) first though:
Yesterday was a somewhat strange day – apparently, it wasn’t that busy anywhere, including at Apple’s flagship store in London. I checked out two local shops – one O2 shop and one Carphone Warehouse – to see what the public response to the device going on sale was.
So in summary, (1) it certainly wasn’t crazy-busy, and (2) the variant of choice on the day was the white iPhone 3GS 16GB. I wonder in fact whether the premium of £90 for an extra 16GB of memory in the 32GB device had been deterring people.
Anyway, back to today – I checked out the same two shops locally, at about 3pm this afternoon – what I saw REALLY surprised me! The shops were both very quiet, in fact Carphone Warehouse only had two staff in it (for what was actually a reasonably big shop). The O2 shop had about 4 staff. Here’s the thing though – there were only 2-3 customers in each store….! Now this could be because the iPhone had sold out for example, but, I would suggest that isn’t the case – because it wasn’t (in my experience yesterday) selling at a stunningly fast rate yesterday (so likely stock would be leftover).
Somewhat strangely, the rest of the shopping centre was buzzing and busy, so why these two shops were seemingly more quiet than usual (they were quieter than I’ve usually seen them on a Saturday), when the 3GS has just been launched, is a question I can’t definitively answer. Back to the cost issue perhaps?
So there you have it, after what could be regarded as a reasonable launch day for the 3GS, things went very quiet indeed today. If there’s anyone at O2 or Carphone Warehouse out there that wants to comment on what sales were actually/generally like, please do – it would be very interesting to see what people made of the 3GS sell-rate, from the other side of the sales counter…