Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Britons snap up 'tens of thousands' of iPhones

Britons snap up 'tens of thousands' of iPhones: "

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Over the last few days, there's been plenty of reports about the scale of the iPhone's launch here in the U.K, and what a 'flop' it was. Not so fast, dear readers, for Ars Technica is reporting that on Friday night carrier O2 activated 8,000 handsets: more than double their initial estimate of 3,000, despite issues with activations on the network's side (where have we heard that before?). Problems aside, the iPhone is apparently O2's fastest selling handset with 'tens of thousands' sold. Whilst not as high as the 70,000+ some had been murmuring, that's a remarkable achievement given the widespread poor reporting of the launch by the mainstream media.

Whilst in the queue on Friday, people were being asked what they thought about the iPhone 'lacking a camera', with at least one news crew leaving the Regent Street store with a significant portion of laughter at that question. Of course, with Apple having kept the U.K. iPhone under such tight lock, few had actually seen one 'in the flesh', but not seeing it in the flesh seemingly didn't stop people deriding the device out of hand.

Gripes aside, it seems to have been a moderately successful launch, if not setting the world on fire. Thankfully, if you weren't to be found queuing for an iPhone on Friday, there's a plethora of photographs from the launch here in the U.K. Thanks to all those who left comments on our (repeatedly, and abruptly, interrupted) Live-Blog. If you're wandering where the queues were, you might want to check photos from London #1 #2, Manchester, Birmingham and across the country.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

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