14 DAY TRIAL // The iPhone launch at the end of June was a huge success for Apple and clearly showed that there was a huge demand for the product. With the first European launch just days away, it will be interesting to see if the iPhone does just as well overseas as it did home.
In many ways, it was very hard for the US iPhone launch to not be a success. Years of waiting and rumors of the iPhone on Apple forums had already created quite a large number of interested customers, and the multi-touch interface as well as the OS X operating system made for new and compelling features, that people were eager to try.
Friday's UK launch will have none of these advantages, with the device already being relatively old, the people that wanted one badly already having the possibility of acquiring a hacked version, and both the interface and software being heavily reviewed. Matthew Key, O2 chief executive, told the Financial Times that he expected "a couple of hundred thousand" to reach customer's hands in the first two months after the launch. As usual, analysts have predicted even higher numbers, with Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi expecting as many as 400,000 iPhones to be sold before the end of the calendar year.
Unlike in the US, where Apple sells the majority of iPhones through its retail stores, the company has a much smaller presence in the UK. As such, a lot will depend on O2's retail partner Carphone Warehouse. Key said that both his company, and its retail partners have ordered "hundreds of thousands" of units in preparation for the launch, so they are clearly expecting it to do well, and bring in a lot of new customers. "In the UK market, where the top four networks have pretty much equal shares, it offers a great way for me to get a hell of a lot of high-value customers on to O2 and drive up data usage", he said.