iPhone Resellers Brace for Larger Number of Unsold 1st Gen. iPhones
by Jody Mitoma on April 21, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The Times Online reports that mobile operators with exclusive contracts to sell Apple’s iPhone are bracing themselves for significant losses on unsold stock as they clear the shelves to make way for a new, faster version expected this summer.
If you’ve been paying attention to news lately, you’ll know that this proves to be true.
O2, which sells the phone in the UK, and T-Mobile, the German distributor, are said to have significantly overestimated the number of first version iPhones that would sell in Europe, which really sucks for them.
On Tuesday O2 announced it was cutting the price of the iPhone by more than a third — from £269 to £169 — and two weeks ago T-Mobile made an even more drastic cut, from €399 (£319) to €99. Those are some really increadible price drops. I’d of probably made use of this price drop if I was living in Europe. That’s a pretty huge lose on T-Mobile’s part, but better than not selling them at all, right?
I mean, hell, the iPhone 3G is coming out real soon, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The first generation iPhone will be obsolete. Companies have to do whatever they can to get rid of current stock, to make room for new stock coming June (apparently).
Times Online understands that Apple has placed an order with its Asian suppliers to produce 200,000 of the new 3G iPhones by the end of May, rising to 2 million - 500,000 per week - in June.
With a four week lead time between production and placement, that would leave Mr Jobs free to launch the device during an annual developers conference at which he usually speaks.
Industry sources told Times Online that the device will have a “radically different” appearance to the current device, which has a 4.5 inch screen and slick, aluminium backing. Among the possibilities are flip version, which would enable the screen to be larger, and a sliding model with a regular qwerty keyboard - as opposed to a touchscreen one.
(Source: Times Online)
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April 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Slight criticism of this article: since T-Mobile exists in multiple countries (including the UK), it would have been nice if you’d mentioned which country T-Mobile has slashed their prices in. My memory says it’s Germany, but without having previously kept up to date with this blog/TUAW, I couldn’t possibly have known that.
IMO, users shouldn’t have to Google the things you talk about in blog posts, and if there is something that needs more explanation or proof, you should link to an appropriate page.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
The source link can be found at the bottom of the post, James.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Ok, fair point. But I suppose it depends on how one views the blog posting; is it intended to give us all the information we need, or to interest us enough to read up on it ourselves?
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Yes, the posts are intended to give most, if not all, the information about the product being written about.
My apologies for letting you down with this one.