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Fans Cheer as Apple's iPhone Finally Hits Europe
An anonymous reader sent in this article which opens, "Apple fans lined up through Yesterday night in Germany and Britain to be among the first in Europe to buy an iPhone, the must-have gadget that is set to shake up the mobile industry." Over 10,000 phones were sold in Germany by Friday afternoon. In France, however, the iPhone doesn't arrive until the end of month.
Actually, I understood that the launch wasn't so great.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I heard other things about this:
Bus charters to bring buyers to stores were cancelled.
It costs over Eur 1,600 in contract fees.
From DE press:
"The big run like the startup in the United States, however, didn't show"
"US hysteric, DE deep-relaxed"
"People using software to break the SIM-lock and use cheaper services"
i would like to give you some info on what i have seen in Nürnberg on the day of the launch/day after. First of all, the "T-Punkte", the T-mobile shops as they are called were no more busier than ever.At any given time, 2-4 people were playing with the demo phones asking stupid questions like: "can i use a local prepaid card when i am in Italy, where i go 2-3 times a year?" you should have seen their faces. Because europeans tend to travel inside the EU a lot more often and they do tend to buy local prepaid cards in order to benefit from the local charges.
And on another note, in Köln on the day of the launch, they had 800Iphones on stock. After the big lines at midnight went away, they have sold 200 iphones. So there was not the craze as in the usa.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Firstly: I admit, I bought one last night. I'm an Apple fan; but NOT a fanatical one.
:-D
I bought mine in Southampton, where there's an Apple store. I did go there with the intention of buying one there, but the queue was longer than outside O2 or Carphone Warehouse (the only other two sellers) and the staff had obviously been hyped up to whoop and holler and run along high-fiving the queue, which might herald excitement in the US, but in the conservative UK is distinctly embarrassing and probably put a lot of people off queueing.
I bought mine at an O2 shop and there were more staff (at least 15) than people queueing, even at quarter past six when I turned up (the launch was at 6pm). The staff looked a little embarrassed.
What was most irritating was that I simply wanted to hand over my £270 and take away the damn phone, but while I was waiting I was besieged by O2 staff asking if I was OK, offering me muffins, trying to demo the iPhone, trying to get me to sign up to some expensive insurance deal, trying to sell me accessories, trying to lick my ass... if they had put all these staff behind sales terminals, they would have sold them a damn sight faster and probably sold more of them, as several people got bored and wandered off!
When the Apple shop in Southampton opened for the first time, and when the Nintendo Wii was launched in a variety of local shops, I saw excitement and queueing that deserved this kind of reception. However, it was patently obvious that Apple have vastly overestimated the demand for the iPhone in the UK; I haven't seen the local papers today but I suspect Apple won't be delighted with the coverage (I saw some photographers having a field day making the queue look as small as possible).
As to why, I'm sure everyone knows, but here's a recap as to why it's not the saviour of the UK's mobile industry;
1. We're used to either paying for the phone, or the contract, but not both;
2. We're used to accessing mobile internet on 3G, which was rolled out wider and earlier here than across the USA;
3. There have been several competing devices launched recently, which appeal to a range of demographics; for example, techies will like the N95 while fashion victims will like the Prada wotsit;
4. It's quite chunky as phones go - which might sound pernickerty but the market here is very much geared towards fashionable, neat phones (for example, no manufacturer would dare launch a phone with an aerial here within the last few years as they look so dated, while I hear they're still available in the US).
A final thought on a different note though; I have no doubt that the iPhone will be a success here, it's just Apple misjudged the launch a little. Apple have the marketing power that other manufacturers only dream of, and at the end of the day, the public have little regard for technical features or even cost, it's what they perceive to be fashionable and/or popular that will be a success. And I hope it is; despite it not being perfect, it does a few simple things well, and is a pleasure to use.
And me? I say, roll on the open API
Here in Denmark they tell us NOT TO UPDATE FIRMWARE! Because it might lock the phone to AT&T, and the local phone company has to reset the phone back to 1.0.x firmware... So basically, you buy a half-finished product, stuck at launch firmware... SUCKS!
I'm getting a bit sick of seeing that tag on every "Apple" story.
Look, up there at the top -- see the Slashdot logo? Look immediately below that. The leftmost link should be your name (or you need to get an account, you Coward). And just right of that, "Preferences".
Inside Preferences, click on "Homepage", and scroll to "Customize stories on the homepage".
And in there, click the leftmost radio button next to "Apple". Scroll down again, and save your changes.
You can now shut the fuck up and stop trolling the Apple stories, because you won't even see them.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Agreed, that's a great feature. Unfortunately, for that to be accomodated, you needed the telco to modify the way their voice-mail system works. The fact that Apple has a cult following (and the hype around the iPhone) was want made AT&T change their voice mail system for the iPhone. I can assure you that if $PHONE_MFR had talked to telcos about this prior to Apple, they'd have just said, "But $OTHER_PHONE_MFR doesn't ask for this - why should we go along with you?" Just saying.
My Blackberry Curve does this, and does it quite well.
I've seen them elsewhere, but I do wish that more phones came with them. That's a truly useful feature, but it would be pointless in most phones except touchscreen ones because why would you want to type sideways when your alphabets are facing down, right? Applicability and all that.
Some of those interfaces are nice and very useful. Others? Not so much. Especially Apple's touchscreen keyboard. I just tried out the iPhone at the store before deciding that I liked the new Blackberry better. The biggest reason for choosing so? The keyboard. I could not type a long enough mail without a goodly amount of mistakes. Now, using a stylus could have changed that, but the keys were so small that it was hard for me to type on them anything more than a few words without a mistake. It's quite possible that it's just me, but a lot of people that I've talked to have cited similar problems.
Yes, consistency in Apple UIs is a big plus, I won't even disagree with that. They also find unique ways of applying that to other applications in a very intuitive way.
That is not true. I've seen (and used) several phones with very efficient full-browsers. Now, some of them do not let you have Flash on them, which is a pain, but hey. Secondly, with today's data speeds (and data plans), having the full website be displayed may not necessarily be a good idea, after all.
Well, I think that has more to do with St. Stephen of Jobs than anyone else. To be fair, Wallstreet rarely ever talks of Apple in those terms. That seems rather restricted to the tech industry.
Indeed. On the other hand, something like Nokia N95 does kick the iPhone in its balls - and it is independent of the provider.
I could go on -- but the point is that while the iPhone is
He means his 5th-generation iPod.