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3G iPhone Expected in June

MaineCoasts writes "The Times Online reports that European sellers of the iPhone are braced for 'significant losses' on unsold inventories of first-generation iPhones which must be cleared away for the new 3G versions expected in June. The three European distributors of the iPhone 'sold 330,000 units to the end of December, but industry sources say that European sales of the iPhone were forecast to be between 500,000 and 600,000.'"

24 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Features i'd like before considering getting one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It would be cool if we could see:
    3g
    uncripled bluetooth so it pairs with a gps mouse
    mms
    copy/paste
    camera with flash
    flash support in browser

  2. The ridiculous monthly fees by aliquis · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Just prove that most of us europeans aren't retarded enough to fall for their stupid pricing schemes. I would never buy a fucking phone for 18.000 sek of which only 3.000 sek or so was payed at purchase.

    Nerd as I am I don't have any friends, girls and don't do phone calls. So the "services" I get for the monthly fee are more or less completely useless. Just give me the gadget!

    I've been thinking about getting one and unlock it but I'm to lazy to read how it's done, but I've got the impression it's easy and you can do it yourself nowadays? But I don't think they are sold in Sweden yet so I still have to buy it from some other place and then someone have probably already unlocked it and try to earn some cash on it.

    1. Re:The ridiculous monthly fees by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I see your point. I mean, who really wants to pay a monthly fee for a phone? I think what you're looking for is the iPod Touch.

      --
      http://www.rootstrikers.org/
    2. Re:The ridiculous monthly fees by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't you think that unlockability (without voiding warranties) is a major issue for European consumers? Swapping SIMs when traveling is something that seems taken for granted. Even my can-barely-turn-on-her-computer mother-in-law does it when she travels between England and Spain.

    3. Re:The ridiculous monthly fees by smallfries · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Seriously... this is a public site so get your fucking head out of your fucking ass and quit complaining about the gp's language. Retarded is a very mild form of abuse in europe, and in comparison to the US market it is a perfectly accurate assessment. What on earth makes your think that he should aim his language at your particular definition of clean?

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    4. Re:The ridiculous monthly fees by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The only reason this is common is that roaming charges are so insane. When networks were charging people 50p/minute for roaming on top of the call charges, it made sense to get a local pre-pay sim if you were planning on making more than 10 minutes of phone calls. The European regulator made them reduce prices recently, but I'm not sure how much impact this had. In the US, you have to travel a lot further before you get hit with roaming charges (unless you live very far north or south).

      They're currently trying hard to hang on to their walled-garden and discourage customers from using the real Internet (blocking ports, recompressing images, blocking 'unsafe' sites - including YouTube).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Unlocked by chiller2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Until the phone is available unlocked it's worthless to me. I need to travel between the US and UK, and don't want to have to pay extortionate roaming fees when I already have sims for networks either side.

    --
    --- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6 :)
    1. Re:Unlocked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Is it wrong to refuse to resort to 3rd party hacks, no matter how simple, to use your iPhone how you want to?

      This is a very valid complaint against Apple.

    2. Re:Unlocked by chiller2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you visit any international airport you'll find plenty of people travelling in and out who switch their handsets sims. It's hardly unusual.

      You're quite right that the iPhone can be unlocked easily, but that's not the point. It shouldn't be limited to those with the technical savy to do so. Anyone should be able to buy an iPhone handset and use it on any network they please.

      In the not so distant past, iPhones unlocked with the simple as pie hack you suggest were bricked by a subsequent Apple update. Non techies should not have to worry their unlocked iPhone may die in this way.

      Whether we can hack our way around the roadblocks is irrelevant. We shouldn't have to play these games with devices we spent a lot of money on.

      --
      --- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6 :)
  4. boo-hoo by Maavin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.


    What they really say is: "Damn, we shoudn't have been THAT greedy." or "Hm.. maybe our pricing model was too over the top?"
    --


    Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
  5. Everybody buys them in the US by RealNitro · · Score: 1, Insightful

    iPhones aren't available yet in Belgium and the Euro is very strong compared to the US dollar, so a lot of people visiting the US bring an iPhone home.

  6. Imports? by $random_var · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder, after we take into account the exchange ratio will it be a better deal for US customers to buy an imported iphone at the expected clearance prices? Unfortunately Apple almost certainly has contracts with distributors that prevent them from stepping on each others' territory like that, so they won't be sold directly to the US, but through 3rd parties who will tack on their own profit margin.

    Still, since iPhone unlocking is so easy now, I'd consider buying one if it worked out to be cheap.

  7. Phones doesn't require monthly fees. by aliquis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, since it just cost slightly less and have much less functionallity. Also I would so much prefer the new Sony mp3-players, cowon d2, Sansa Clip/Fuze, over an iPod.

    Over here you can buy a card with credits on it which you spend if you make phone calls, so it's easy to have a cellular phone which doesn't cost anything / month if you don't use it. Or you can get a real cheap subscription with free calls within the network and eventually other networks and/or landlines to.

    If I could get the iPhone for 3000 sek as a gadget and then only pay for the phone calls I would actually make I would probably have gotten one by now.

  8. Re:Features i'd like before considering getting on by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    updated software has fixed the MMS issues.
    Very few phones have camera's with flash
    I disable flash most of the time now anyways,

    I will take 3g and either uncrippled bluetooth for a GPS dongle, or my favorite a car adaptor dock, with a GPS receiver built in. That way GPS runs off my car battery not killing the iphones battery. Copy paste, is a software/interface issue. figure it out and release it as a patch apple.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  9. Sources My Ass by His+Shadow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are these the same "sources" that attempted to screw with Apple's stock price by inventing a "whisper number" of one million expected iPhone sales at release when numbers of expected sales were in the 150 to 350 thousand mark?

    --

    Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos

  10. Re:And one more.. by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That is actually one of the main reasons I'll never buy one. I like having a real keyboard and can type without looking at all with my phone.

  11. Re:In other news.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Flying chairs and Microsoft are never off-topic The flying chairs thing was never as funny as some people think to start off with, and it was frankly done to death ages ago. The fact that every second article now includes some tedious nerd contriving a feeble excuse to include this "joke" (regardless of how offtopic) says more about their unimaginative, phony and downright sheeplike sense of humour... or lack of it.
  12. I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them so! by MacDork · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What they really say is: "Damn, we shoudn't have been THAT greedy."

    Says who? O2/T-Mobile, or Apple... Apple is the one demanding a cut of the carriers' revenue. Hence, no carrier subsidized iPhones.

    What I find interesting is.. oh wow, only 50 posts in the first 90 minutes? Where are the fanboys now? Seven months ago, when I predicted with prefect accuracy that Apple would fail, you couldn't get them to STFU. They were gaa gaa over the iPhad, and now look... They are nowhere to be found. Fair weather fanboys as always. Those fanboys aren't real Mac fans. They don't care if Apple is delivering great products. They buy Apple as a status symbol.

    Apple has failed. Apple failed for reasons I outlined months... almost a year ago. I predicted it before the phone even launched. Apple is selling a locked product that is defective by design. Worse, Apple is spitting in the face of the Mac developers who are truly the most hardcore mac fans out there. That's bad business.

  13. Re:In other news.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If I was less holy than thou when I criticized you, that would probably make me a hypocrite.

  14. Re:I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them s by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm an Apple-critical Mac user (love their designers, really dislike their business practices), and I don't own an iPhone for many of the reasons described in this thread. But the problems with the iPhone are eminently fixable, and I expect the iPhone to become a stronger product over the next couple of years. In Europe, it is a flop. But in the US, it is doing well, and the surprise success it is enjoying as a status symbol among the elite of less-developed nations (as awkward as that is, perhaps, for those of use who might have some qualms about those elites) who are inevitably buying locked phones and unlocking them to get them to work on local networks must be sending a strong signal to Apple. I don't know what the details of their contracts with AT&T, etc., is, but I suspect that they've retrieved a couple of their Rottweiler lawyers from attacking bloggers and supposed trademark and trade secret violators to look for ways to end their exclusivity deals ASAP.

    I hope so, because I'm unlikely ever to use AT&T, and I travel overseas far too much not to swap SIMs. (I'm more likely to buy the Japan version of the iPhone than the US one, if push came to shove.)

  15. Re:Why I won't buy an iPhone anytime soon by thanatos_x · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With respect to your critiques of the iPhone, you're comparing a device that is 4-6 times as much and weighs almost 4 times as much as the iPhone.

    It's got a number of features that the iPhone doesn't... but i could say the UX is a toy compared to a regular mobile laptop, and that such a laptop is a toy compared to a desktop replacement, so really everyone should lug around a desktop replacement.

    The iPhone easily slips into a pocket, and fills it's intended role well. I'm very happy to see the shock it's given the market. There are 4-5 iPhone-esq phones that should be available in the US in 2008, which will hopefully encourage more than incremental improvements from apple.

    The UX is 5.9x3.75x1.5 inches and weighs 1.2 pounds. It's certainly tiny, but it's not something that would fit into most pockets. They're built different roles, and should be judged as such.

    --
    I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
  16. Re:Why I won't buy an iPhone anytime soon by weston · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The iPhones retarded lack of Adobe Flash and Sun Java support makes its web browsing experience, for me at least, abysmal.

    What kind of sites are your browsing that require *Java* these days? If the bulk of your daily visits is to sites with scientific visualizations, I can buy this, but most of the web has been Java free since the applet craze of the late 90s passed.

    At any rate, yes, if bulk of your web browsing requires Flash or Java, then, yes, the iPhone is certainly not how you should be doing it. There's a large enough chunk of the web that doesn't need it that the iPhone remains a great browsing tool for most people.

    Until the iPhone can hold a candle to one of these [dynamism.com] running Xubuntu ( Ubuntu + Xfce ) , then I will just consider it a toy, with its one redeeming feature being multi-touch integrated with a great UI.

    Also, it's a phone. And 1/3-1/2 the price.

    Don't get me wrong -- I think the UX series are pretty cool, and I think they're also the right product for a lot of Slashdotters who don't like the iPhone because it's not the ultimate open palmtop computing environment they've always wanted.

    However, it's not a phone. EVDO + SIP is close, but it's not really quite ready based on my tests anyway (and it's a TOS violation for some carriers).

    The iPhone is a successful product for its target audience because it's a pretty good phone, plus an iPod, plus part of the small set of mobile phones that have web browsing experiences that don't suck. The extra computing stuff, closed as it may be, is reall icing on the cake.

  17. Re:I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them s by dangitman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, I'm not a fan of the iPhone. But I don't see how you can say that Apple has failed with the iPhone. I don't think making millions of dollars selling a popular product is failure.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  18. Re:Features i'd like before considering getting on by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So what's that 2-3 styles of camera phones with flash? wow that is a so in demand feature. I bet it has a color screen too.

    Cell phone camera's are dumb. The only good reason they have to exist would be for a video phone that no one uses.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.