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.'"

Re:The ridiculous monthly fees

[Naughty Bob]

Just prove that most of us europeans aren't retarded enough to fall for their stupid pricing schemes.

I bet that we Europeans are retarded enough, but we have a much healthier marketplace for the moment.

Not to be pessimistic, but I can only imagine that O2, T-Mobile and Orange are looking at their excess inventory, looking across at the US market with envious eyes, and are then beginning to try to figure out how they can conspire to handicap the EU market, just like US politicians have been paid to do over there.

Re:The ridiculous monthly fees

[Frag-A-Muffin]

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.

I'm from Canada, and perhaps it's a blessing that it isn't available in Canada yet :)

I purchased mine in the states and unlocked it to use with Rogers. I've done a bunch for friends too. Gets easier by the day (Thank iphone dev team!)

Anyways, my point is, It's probably cheaper if you buy one from somewhere else and unlock it and use it on your own terms. No pesky contracts, you pick the plan that you want (or keep your existing plan).

I've never used my cellphone so much before the iPhone. It just does so much. It's an amazing device.

Just my $0.02 CAD.

Re:I'll take one

[cs02rm0]

Not without GPS for me thanks.

iPhone? In Europe??

[ThePhilips]

Well, to be frank, I'm surprised that iPhone took off in Europe at all.

Before iPhone, over here in Germany, there were literally no affordable data rates. Now there are. But still those which are affordable are useless on iPhone due to the all the limits set low.

Also, 3G despite being rolled out all over Europe, still used by only fraction of people. So it is not really any major attraction.

If Celcos want to move more iPhones they have to lower data rates considerably, so they will be accessible to majority of European market - youth, students and alike.

Re:Imports?

[$random_var]

You make a good point, but cost is important too. I'm very much a "good enough" kind of guy when it comes to tech... I'm content to stay a couple of versions away from the state of the art. Yeah, browsing will get faster soon... but I already have my laptop for when I want to do extended browsing sessions. For me I think the iphone would be very much of a "pull it out of my pocket to google something" kind of device, mostly textual and low-bandwidth.

Additionally, I've heard that 3G's performance gains are vastly overrated as well, because the latency remains about the same and latency is a much bigger contributor to the perception of lag in either 3G or EDGE, and 3G tends to have more signal errors which must be corrected by re-downloading chunks (not sure if that works at the packet level or file level or whatever).

poor showing

[nguy]

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.'"

That's a really poor showing. The Nokia N95 sold more than a million units in the UK alone in 2007; that's a single model and a single country, and it didn't have anywhere near the hype surrounding the iPhone release:

http://www.intomobile.com/2007/11/28/brief-nokia-n95-sales-in-the-uk-top-1-million.html [intomobile.com]

I can't figure out why anybody would buy an iPhone: it's a clunky phone with clunky desktop integration. Adding 3G doesn't change that.