14 DAY TRIAL // While T-Mobile made a first statement on the number of iPhones it managed to release on the handset's first day out on German market, UK officials are less willing to give out any precise figures. Their statement rested at saying that tens of thousands of iPhones have been sold over these last few days.
O2 Chief Executive Peter Erskine offered only an ambiguous figure on the sales rate that Apple's phone managed to score over the past weekend. "Tens of thousands" could very well mean just about anything from 10,000 to 90,000, which turns it into a quite worthless statement. Still, the figure should surpass Germany's official 10,000 iPhone units sold in Germany only in the first day of the handset's release there.
O2 stated that the iPhone proved to be the biggest selling phone for them ever. Considering the contract that the operator managed to land with Apple, a great deal of this income should head over to the producer, along with a big chunk of all revenues. This could very well make it the best sold phone from O2's history, but not necessarily the most profitable one as well.
Still, the iPhone was enough to determine many people to switch carriers in order to be among those owning Apple's phone. Moreover, it determined a great number of people, as ambiguous as the recent statements show this figure to be, to gather in front of O2's stores for a subscription.
O2's UK Chief Executive Matthew Key expects the iPhone to bring "hundreds of thousands" unit sales until the end of this year. The holiday season should also be a great occasion for them to increase the phone units sales. Only for this release, O2 made great preparations and recruited 1,400 new staff members to sell the iPhone in its stores.