This week T-mobile announced the numbers of sold iPhones since launch in Germany – 70,000 units. According to the company’s press release it was by far the strongest requested Multimedia phone available.
While this number sounds amazingly high for this short time period, taking into account that during Christmas season about 2.3 million units were sold sobers the enthusiast a little. The corresponding numbers for the same period of time were 190,000 iPhones (UK) and 70,000 (France).
Can we say that the iPhone didn’t meet its expectations?
The iPhone follows the profile of almost every new thing swapping over from America to us. Germans seem to be skeptic in the first place, and rather reluctant buyers.
There is another important point to consider. I really have no idea what reputation AT&T has in the US, but in Germany T-mobile is polarizing the crowd. It is popular making contracts with companies and business customers rather than youth and private customers.
This image originates in the history of the company: German Telekom, now simply called T-Com was the state phone company before they were “outsourced” into the free market when other companies wanted to have their share, too. Competition of course was very healthy and especially the mobile market established its own hierarchies. Telekom additionally had the problem still being a huge monster of a company – since they couldn’t match the prices of smaller companies on the rise, they went for big business deals rather than Mr. Small Customer.
Therefore a surely significant amount of German Apple fans reject T-mobile and thereby the legal version of the iPhone. Since there are ways of using a different network by manipulation of the system software supposedly you also find more jailbroken units abroad. Generally the prospect of not having a guarantee and having no support is a big Non- seller.
For the European market it seems very likely that the big conquest of the iPhone will start with moving to 3G in the second generation. Since 3G is essential for companies and T-mobile mainly serving these clients, this move should be a sure bet!
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TAGS: iPhone
