The hype surrounding the British launch of Apple’s iPhone does not appear to be as great as expected. Apple, Carphone Warehouse and telco O2 were prepared for peak crowds in their stores, but only a handful of customers showed up.
A number of people who thought they would have to queue to get an iPhone on Friday, report on various sites that the expected crowds did not come. A few even arrived a day earlier in order to get hold of an iPhone as quickly as possible, but afterwards it turns out that it was not necessary to ‘queu’.
A photo report on the Dial-a-Phone weblog shows that it was just as busy a few hours before the iPhone’s official release in the UK as it was hours after. The Register message that O2, the telco that won the contract from Apple in the UK, has deployed more than 1,400 extra employees to cope with the crowds in the stores. In vain, the introduction of the iPhone in England did not bring more people into the store. Friday 9 November it was just as busy in the shops as usual.
In contrast to the coverage of the Reg, Ars Technica states that reports that a day after the introduction of Apple’s mobile phone in the United Kingdom, more than 8,000 iPhones were activated. This is more than double what O2 expected, Ars sources within O2 said. The telco would have a target of 3000 activated, and thus sold, iPhones on launch day. Those same sources have told Ars Technica that O2 has signed a five-year contract. This means that all data and voice traffic will still run through the British telecom provider until 2012.