Sources within O2 have leaked that the wonder phone may have sold as little as 30,000 units since launch, whoops! O2’s Matthew Key had told the FT prior to launch that he expected a couple of hundred thousand units to be sold within the first two months with Apple singing off the same hymn sheet; however, with only 30,000 units sold in three weeks, pundits are estimating sales could be as low as 25% of this figure.Of the 30,000 or so said to have been sold only 26,500 have been activated, O2 intimate the missing 3,500 are all wrapped up as Christmas presents, whereas we all know they’ve been though a teenagers back bedroom in Brentford who’s hacked them and are now happily sitting on competitors networksResearch companies suggest that UK consumers are happy to pay for a monthly contract or the handset, but, importantly, not both.Geoff Blaber of research firm CSS Insight, said: "I suspect a number of users went into O2 stores knowing the device was £269, and thought there was an opportunity to do a deal", "I think that's been a big shock." It is well known us Brits like to brag about a deal."In the UK, it's up against a much more severe level of competition," Blaber said. "If you compare the £269 iPhone to a number of products from the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson, all of which are directly cross-sold by the operators, there's a significant level of competition.”Research company GfK NOP recently surveyed 500 UK residents and found almost half said they would never buy an iPhone and a further 26% said it just too expensive.So that’s over 75% of the population that won’t touch it – perhaps they can sell it into business?No, a recent poll by a CIO user panel suggested that industry buyers saw the iPhone as too expensive to roll out as a business device.The testers at Mobile Business towers never saw an iPhone before launch, perhaps they would have been blown away by the GUI and written nice things about it if they had. When is the European 3G version coming out? :wink:
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