Apple tells iPhone vendors not to reveal sales figures

UK carrier O2 has confirmed that Apple has placed it under a gagging order to prevent it from publicly revealing how many iPhone handsets it’s sold to date. The company’s head of media relations, Simon Lloyd, told Register Hardware that it’s a stipulation within the company's sales agreement with Apple that O2 can’t release …

[Steve Evans]

Silence speak volumes

If they'd sold shed loads we would have all heard about it.

If they'd sold out, and there were back orders (a la Wii), we'd have heard about it.

Instead there's been very little said, and then a gag applied to completely mute it.

Face it Apple, your over priced, under spec'ed (all be it with with a nice GUI) isn't going down well over here in the continent of picture messages and flash equipped 5meg camera phones you can get for nothing on a contract.

[Alan Jenney]

If it's not a high figure...

Well, I'm sure Apple would be wanting O2 and CPW to release figures if the iPhone had sold in large numbers, so that leaves the logical alternative: it's sold in smaller numbers than Apple would like.

... waiting for iPhone that has data and camera specification in line with competitors.

[Ash]

China Will Grow Larger.

"...a specific reason for the breakdown wasn't revealed."

They probably produced a chinese made clone which will sot 30% of the iPhone, include better software (in the form of embedded Linux) and ship it out at almost cost to every retailer who'll stock it.

I'd love for the guy's in the meeting to look at Jobs and say "You don't have a product."

[Alastair Dodd]

Comforting

I'm glad that less people in the UK are being financially bumraped by Job(bie)s

[Ross]

Maths

So can they tell us how many they bought from Apple and how many they have left?

[DirkGently]

No news is...

...bad news I'm sure. Would you prevent people from publishing the stats if your sales figures were good?

[dave]

still not seen one in the flesh

just like paris

[Mectron]

one more reason

Not to buy any products my shady (rottent) Apple. What do they have to hide? they want to keep the hype even when the iCrap is a flop?

[DrXym]

Tell me the UK was smarter than the US

O2, Vodafone, Three, T-Mobile offer most of the phone in their lineup for NOTHING if you sign a 12 or 18 month contract. Even the poshest phones can be had for nothing if you sign up to a £35 per month contract.

How much does an iPhone cost? £269. On top of which the cheapest tariff is £35 per month, which includes data transfer but has only 1/3 of the talk time of the regular £35 tariff. It's ridiculous.

I hope the UK public have had more brains that to fall for this ripoff. If you absolutely must have an iPod, you can buy the iPod Touch for £199. That leaves you £70 better off straight away. Choose a normal phone and lower tariff to go with it and you'll save yourself a small fortune.

[supermeerkat]

@Alastair Dodd

How can people who purchase something of their own free will be described as "bumraped"?

If Job's hung around Apple shops and force people at knife point to buy his phone that metaphor might just work.

[Webster Phreaky]

Guilty Criminals Always Refuse to Talk too

And don Corleoni S Jobs and the Apple Mafia is no exception. Nothing like trying to hide the fatal truth that the iPhony is Flopping than right before the "Fruits, Nuts -n - Flakes Bowl" that is Macworld San Francisco.

[Bruce Robinson]

Double Bluff

... or maybe they've just sold more and SJ wants to tell everybody tomorrow at Macworld.....No, I find that hard to swallow as well.

Or just maybe tomorrow, they're going to announce Iphone 2 which will still be offered at a silly price, (No lesson learned there), but at least will be worth having on a lousy contract ....and to show there are no hard feeling, you can have the old Iphone for free on an O2 contract, as we've got loads left over after Christmas.

Now lets see what tomorrow brings !!!!

[jai]

wait for MW

i suspect Apple are just keeping everyone schtumm because they want to make an announcement at MWSF. they'd rather get the press than let CW or O2 get it

[Barry]

If only this were headline news

Tomorrows red-tops:

APPLE: We thought that UK consumers would fall for it. Like they did over here.

[Ryan Stewart]

It does smell....

American here. Do you guys not have that breed of rabid fanboys we have here? You know, the kind that skipped out on their fast food jobs to hand over two weeks pay for an iphone the very second it was released? I guess it would make sense you wouldnt since Apple has like 8% market in the US but less than 2% worldwide.

We have them here and they are like jihadists. I worry the day Jobs starts to send them into competitors offices wearing bombs. There are enough of them that they could do some serious harm.

[Marco Alfarrobinha]

"Iphone II will be announced tomorrow"

And will be an even bigger rip-off yet droves of people (all 10 of them) will sleep outside Apple Store wanting one. Bless be Nokia and Sony-Ericson for making good, modern, up to date phones!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple bashers

Could I possibly request that everyone who hates Apple (alot of people on here it seems) please stop reading every article about them? Seems very strange that you'd all spend so much time reading and writing about something that you hate so much.

It rocks, and each and every person I've showed it to has said they thought it was amazing and would love one, show me another phone or mp3 player that has the same reaction. Answer, there isn't one. It isn't perfect but then I've not seen a mobile phone that is, its simply the best there is at this time.

G3, well, I had G3 on my last phone, it sucked and I wouldn't have dreamed of sending emails on my last phone as it was impossible to use.

Media-messaging. Are you all 12? Who uses it? I don't and a I dunno anyone who does. If I want to take a picture and send it to someone I'll email them it, for free.

If you don't want one, fine, give the rest of us a rest from your Apple bashing, move along, get a life and go play with your Nokias or whatever else you have thats sooooo much better.

[Alastair Dodd]

@supermeerkat & the coward

it's a fashion item - I think paying 4-10x the actual worth for any "label" is bending over and taking from that company and I sensible not to let that happen to me.

The interface is nice but that it (and that now been copied and done just as well on cheaper BETTER all round products

The iPhone is overpriced and subsequently underliked over here.

[Chris]

iPod Touch anti-halo

I suspect that any poor figures may well have to do with the fact that the iPod Touch got here before the iPhone.

[Richard Large]

@ AC who wants us to stop Apple bashing

It doesn't rock. I've used one in the stores, and used my friends. I just can't get the hang of the lack of feedback from the keyboard.

E-mail/MMS? Why on earth would I want to e-mail... when I can SMS and MMS for free, with nobody who doesn't have a blackberry can receive e-mail on their phone. I never bothered to set it up... why bother when SMS is there setup for you out of the box?

3G is great - I love video calling. Doesn;t sound much to most, but when your other half lives 1000km away, it's a lot.

[Youngdog]

@ AC Re: Apple Bashers

I don't know if you live in England but I do and everyone I know uses text messaging on their phones - and I do mean EVERYONE. Even my old dear (gawd bless 'er) who is in her sixties and got her first phone 2 years ago texts me to let me know what she is up to. I phone rocks? You spent how much to get 'a reaction'? How old are you? 12?

[Walter Brown]

@AC

"It isn't perfect but then I've not seen a mobile phone that is, its simply the best there is at this time"

I would argue that statement with you, its not "simply the best"... Go have a look at the HTC TyTN II, its a lot closer to perfect than the iPhone is...

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/08/review_htc_tytn_ii_smartphone/

[Boris Winkle]

@anonymous coward

And you're all on your lonesome, i.e MINORITY.

So maybe it's easier if you don't read the MAJORITIES comments.

Sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Apple Bashers

I've got my Nokia N95, £40 a month.. for free, on an 18 month contract with more minutes and texts than I can *ever* hope to use. I can sell the phone if I really wanted, and use my sim in another phone. I can use another networks sim card in that phone also.

Take the £270 (Which is daylight robbery imo) you have to pay to get the thing in the first place, THEN get a crappy contract with hardly any minutes.. and based on the £35/mo MINIMUM tarriff (The crappy one) You end up paying £900.. So your iPhone is worth £900? Oh and there's no get out clause either. You're stuck with it and you can't switch to another network..

Another thing I've wondered since the iPhone came out.. what if someone paid off all their contract? (All pissing £900 of it!). Aren't you legally entitled by EU laws to change to any network you wish? What will Jobs do then eh?

[Chad H.]

@ the guy who said godbless nokia...

dude, nokia was set up in the 19th century to make toilet paper (look it up, its true), and the n and e series show a true return to those roots. Yeah, I'm a iPhone user, but I wouldn't go trumpeting noideas funny definition of "build quality". Now if you had said samsung instead, I couldnt fault you.

The fact is the iPhone is where the networks wanted phones to be 3 years ago, but everyone else still drags their feet, there are few mobile web users cos its a pain to use. If there was more mobile web users, prices would be lower as competition took over. Noidea and co should have been releasing this phone when edge was released.

Its not overcharging by the networks that almost killed the mobile web, it was a crappy ui.

Mobile phones have this awful tendency to be designed by the marketing department, full of features, but no easy way to use them. So the iPhone doesnt have every feature (MMS? Come on, mms is like 20p, I can do more with my free email!), but what it does do, it does amazingly.

[Henry Blackman]

Re: every post (almost)

Do anyone replying, rather hysterically, here, actually have an iPhone. Or used one for more than a few minutes? It's obvious that you have not.

I've had Symbian, Windows Mobile, and other phones, and the iPhone wipes the floor with them all. The interface is a pleasure to use, better than the horror of predictive text, even a "full size" keyboard pales into the pleasure of the iPhone's auto correction of my typing. Full size video is watchable, and the headphones are great, so even on the large small screen it's quite immersive. Wifi is SO simple to us, automatically managing my connections, and EDGE is practically as fast as 3G (although not HSDPA). The best thing ever however, is the browser. Who needs to cart a laptop around when this thing is just perfect.

With regard to the tariff, do those £35 a month tariffs, with the N95 (for example) free, include data. Err, no. You pay more for that. I'm happy with the £35 a month I pay for, when much of my utilization is data, not minutes, or even texts. I mean, who texts these days? It's so last year, when I'm using IM via Safari. It's a shame there is little choice in tariffs, but really unlimited EDGE, really unlimited Wifi almost everywhere via The Cloud, and an amazing interface, including an iPod, is quite possibly the best combination of technologies, and tariffs available.

[Chad H.]

@ Richard large

what century are you living in? Almost every phone today does email.

As for mms and SMS for free... Err, I thin you'll find you have an allowance. Email is unlimited.

I love my iPhone, there is no better phone for the mobile web, but I'll freely admit its not for everyone.

Beats those stinking buggy windows mobile devices anyday.

[Henry Blackman]

PS: Silence is golden

Has anyone thought that Apple wants silence because they want to be the ones who announce good news?

It seems that the stats from Google, and websites in general is that iPhones must be selling like hot cakes... otherwise why would these companies be spending money on creating technology for them? Why would web stats say that there are more users with iPhones on the internet in 6 months, than all other smartphones combined?

Silence is golden indeed.

[Shane McCarrick]

Apple Bashers

I'm not an Apple Basher- I have a Powerbook, which I use on a daily basis and I love it. However, I'm not insane enough to pay my hard-earned cash for a phone and then get locked into a totally crap contract. Sure- its nice eye candy- but my Sony Ericsson P990i is far more powerful, has 3G and a decent camera- with oodles of upgradeable memory- oh, and after I've abused the battery- I can swap it out myself with an off-the-shelf spare very cheaply. Phones are a commodity- no-one pays much for them anymore- Apple has completely lost the plot in my eyes.

[Rob Daglish]

Let me put on my Flameproof suit a minute...

But I'm going to stick my head over the parapet here. I hated the iPhone - until I went and used one. Ok, it doesn't have 3G, but hell, the signal round here is very limited for 3G, and the amount of testing I've done for a project revolving round 3G just proves that.

I've had HTC phones, nokias, sony ericssons, and even an eee PC, and for the stuff I want to do on the web, the iPhone beats them all hands down. I can make and receive phone calls on it (and what else is amobile for at the end of the day?) and I can send texts. I don't think I've ever sent or received an MMS, or ever tried to make or receive a video call, so I can't honestly say I miss those features.

It isn't for everyone, and I wouldn't try and suggest that everyone wants/needs/should have one. But neither should you try and suggest that if I like it and you dont, I shouldn't have one, so for once, can't everyone be allowed to have their own opinion without all the back biting and in fighting that goes on in the comments?

[Webster Phreaky]

"Apple bashers", back to de Nial with you

Dear Apple Kool Aid Drinker(s) ... could you please not expend all your efforts of the 3.5% crowd trying to interject your insignificant ideas, useless opinions, or Fantasyland dreams of being a useful component of the technology industry by reading anything on the internet and commenting that the rest of us 96.5 percenters have to look at, and just go back to your world of denial. You've got your 100% Apple supported pimp magazines Macworld and PC World, isn't that enough for you and your insignificant 3.5%?

[Scott]

RE: Apple bashers

"...show me another phone or mp3 player that has the same reaction."

The Apple Touch. With no contract. And isn't vastly overpriced. And isn't locked down to the point of insanity.

Shame it doesn't actually sound as good as say, a Sony NWZ818...

Seriously, it isn't Apple that's being bashed here, as much as their strange notion that their iPhone is the best thing ever made, and the fact that it is lacking most of the standard features in most other high-end phones isn't really important.

Now, if they produced an iPhone with 3G or even HSDPA, at least a 4MP camera, bluetooth and wasn't completely locked to O2, AND was a reasonable price... maybe it would actually sell well.

[J]

Incomplete

They gag ordered them into not talking about the sales figures, but forgot to gag order them into not talking about the gag order into not talking about the sales figures... Is this even English by now?

The icon is me.

[Henry Wertz]

Chinese iPhone, iphone opinions

"They probably produced a chinese made clone which will sot 30% of the iPhone, include better software (in the form of embedded Linux) and ship it out at almost cost to every retailer who'll stock it."

Yep, I saw an article about it months ago. The reviewer was amazed to see what basically looked like an iPhone, but was a bit faster, and allowed 3rd-party software to be installed -- developed within like a month or so of iPhone being released. (Yes it was running embedded Linux). It was starting out at basically 1/2 of the iPhone cost or perhaps less, with no lock-in to any particular service. The reviewer actually found it to be slightly nicer than a real iphone (it had MMS, had 3G I think, replaceable battery, supported more video playback formats, and again allowed 3rd-party software making it a true smartphone.)

@iPhone fan(s):

If you want to think the iPhone is best, you can. Here's why I think it's not:

No, EDGE is nowhere near as fast as 3G (no-one has non-HSDPA 3G anymore as far as I know). Or to compare with CDMA-technology (as used by several carriers here in the States), it's nowhere near as fast as EVDO.

Not having MMS support is kinda dumb.. people do send plenty of photos and the like as silly as it may seem. OK, it's possible to get along without it, but for that much money it should have it 8-).

3rd (doesn't apply in Europe but does here) AT&T is ranked pretty low in terms of customer support, network quality, etc.. I would not deal with them in order to get an iPhone.

Finally, iPhone is smartphone-expensive while not being a smartphone (smartphones allow the user to install their own software, while Apple has intentionally been breaking methods to install 3rd-party software with every firmware update.)

[Graham Lockley]

Wrong!

'With regard to the tariff, do those £35 a month tariffs, with the N95 (for example) free, include data. Err, no. You pay more for that.'

My T-mobile tariif (with Web n Walk) comes to £32 a month. In real terms, unlimited data usage (even to the point where I have actually used it as a modem for my lappy at times) along with more voice and MMS/texts than I can use in a month.

You may like the phone (after my 30 mins of playing with one the over all feel I got was 'Fischer-Price') but dont pretend the tarrif/bundle is anything less than a rip off.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Youngdog

You misread the post you replied to - he said who uses MMS messages, not SMS messages.

He's right too, personally I can't have sent more than 20 MMS messages in all the years I've had a mobile phone... but I have sent thousands of text messages.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - the gloves are really off!

It's just a phone! What proves it's special is, ironically, all these people who don't like it going on and on and on about it!

There's nowhere near this much press (or comment) on the N95 or the HTC effort (and OMG it's so funny you should mention that - it really is shoddy) or any other handset.

That a company who have never made a phone can come to market with this thing and sell ANY is remarkable - but factor in that it is actually very good (especially if you like the choices Apple have made on the features/battery/usability balance, which I happen to) and that they have sold quite a lot and you have something truly remarkable - hence all the column inches.

I've been a Mac user for many years, so I'm used to people calling me names and insulting me for my choices, but it's still sad. I'm a smart guy (as are many of my friends and family who also use Apple) and I have chosen an iPhone because I like it.

Please - get a life and stop being so rude and petty.

[Steven Raith]

Just to clarify...

"Wifi is SO simple to us, automatically managing my connections, *and EDGE is practically as fast as 3G* (although not HSDPA)."

Edge max speed - realistically about 175kbit/sec effective, once you take reception and error correction etc into account

The bare minimum 3G speed is 144kbps - most services are about 384kbps, or about 300 effective.

Neither are perfect, but 3G is notably quicker than EDGE in my experience, especially for media intensive sites that the iPhone is capable of showing well. To claim that EDGE is practically as fast as 3G is like saying that a Metro GTi is nearly as fast as an Astra GTe - OK, neither are rocketships, but there is still a world of difference between them in real world terms. IME anyway.

Lets face it - once mobiles start regularly coming equipped with HSDPA modems built in [hello multiple megabit connections] then the 1st generation iPhone is going to seem stone age. Especially to those locked into 18 month contracts.

Assuming that iPhone II will be on the cards soon, if they could sort out a proper contract [maybe they'll do an upgrade path for existing users and something sensible for the rest of us] then I'd be really rather seriously interested - it does seem to be the best 'solution' to the whole WebOnTheMove thingy so far, and certainly the bits I have played with on it are infinitely nicer to use than anything Windows Mobile has offered, including Opera Mobile Beta thingy that apes the iPhones browser - although it's hindered by running on WinMobile if you ask me. Nasty, nasty interface - about as ergonomic and pleasant to use as a bed of nails after spending three days on a sunbed.

The thing is that the iPhone just isn't £900 better. Even with HSPDAwhatchamacallit, if they keep the current contractual shenanigans, it'll never really become a staple like Nokias 6230-esque/SEs K-W750-esque/Samsung D600-900esque class phones, of which almost everyone seems to have an example of, with the exception of those who use blackberries and XDAs for business.

Me? SE K310i. Yes, I'm a fucking luddite :-)

Steven R

[Anonymous Coward]

poor apple

I do feel sorry for them and their iPhone. How do you explain that your phone has rich email, internet and media playback like Windows Mobile but is lacking all the crashing, gradual-white-screen-of-death, jerky media playback, etc.

There are no feature-list checkboxes for this sort of stuff, and apple-bashers will jump on any higher stability claim (as true as it may be) and decry it for fanboy lies.

I don't know about how things stack up in whinging-pom-territory, but in Australia if the iPhone were to come out with plans that match what the US have on AT&T it would be the best value from any telco...

[Andy Worth]

Re:Apple Bashers

Just at the original Anonymous Coward, every person you've showed it to says it's amazing simply because they are too polite to tell you the truth, that you'd have to be a tosser to buy it. It's akin to the people who used to go around flashing their Rolex watch - everyone would tell them how nice they look to their face but then make wanker signs behind their back.

I'm not going to say what model of mobile I have, but needless to say that it has the functions I need, and I got it for free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Info on sales figuers

Suggest the iPhone fans read this. From the 1 million mobile phones sold around Christmas very few were iPhones!

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/iPhone_sales_a_Christmas_flop.html

You can now see why Orange France are happy to announce 70,000 iPhones sold in a month but O2 can't say if they met their 200,000 sales target for end of December.

[Andrew Maddison]

@Chad H

Almost every phone may *do* email, but how many people can be bothered to set it up? Or register yet another unmemorable email address so their network will "support" their email usage? Compare that with *every* phone that does SMS and virtually every phone that can do MMS (the iPhone being a notable exception, of course).

SMS and MMS for me cost nothing - they're included on my tariff. No limits, other than a "fair usage" limit of around 2000 messages per month per number.

Plus when I'm away from a wireless access point (which would be most of the time I'm not on a computer - it's supposedly a 'mobile' phone after all), web browsing isn't the crap 2.5G experience that iPhone users are lumbered with. You might have an unlimited data tariff, but how much data can you actually shift without falling asleep on EDGE (assuming you're in an area covered by it, which is still way less than 3G coverage)?

I got my N95 several months ago, for free, and my total monthly contract bill is £32.50 - including a 120MB data allowance (not a huge amount but it's enough for web browsing, live GPS map data, Remote Desktop through a laptop, and the occassional song download). The deals are there if you push hard enough, but they aren't there for the iPhone because CPW and O2 can't budge on what they're allowed to offer.

Maybe iPhone version 2 will sort out most of the problems, but it seems more likely from past Apple efforts that version 2 will sort out some, and then they can skin all the fanboys again with version 3.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy

Ok.. no.. I'm not 12, and no, I'm not a wanker either thanks very much.

3G may well be faster but then when all you can do on your phone is view a few crappy text pages rather than full web pages whats the point? The last two phones I had both had 3G and short of looking up the odd football score thats all I ever used it for whereas my iPhone I browse the web on it just about every day and use it for gmail account constantly rather than booting up the laptop or going upstairs to our desktop.

It didn't cost £900 so stop saying that, its just plain crap. You can't argue "I got my phone for free yours cost £900" when you're including the tariff on one and not on the other. Its just plain stupid.

Also folk saying "its only a phone".. well, I'd disagree, its more than a phone but then if it is "only a phone". Why are you all getting so upset about it? Why spend your time reading every article there is on it and then feeling the need to post comments on it about how much you hate it? So I'm sad for buying one huh? Aren't you more than a little bad sad "hating" an inanimate object? As I said, if you don't like it and don't want one, fine, move along, go and post on the Microsoft or Nokia forums.

iPhone haters and Blu-ray fan boys unite, all people with pathological hatred of an inanimate object. Weirdos.

[Subtilior]

Twits

When you realize that most of the Apple bashing here should be read in a Monty Pythonesque "British Twit" kind of voice, then it makes a lot more sense: The problem is that the UK is filled to the brim with chippy twerps who think that anyone buying an iPhone is trying to "make a statement" about how sophisticated they are, and therefore feel an overwhelming need to pull them down a peg. This phenomenon is common across all kinds of goods in Britain, and is the main reason why Britain sucks so much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Future marketing

They dont want the potentially dissapointing sales figure to effect future negotiations with other telcos (China, India, AsiaPac). Why would telcos give 30% of revenue sharing (Apples' contract with telcos) if the volumes are not large enough? It's all about protecting the ability to get future contracts to Apples benefit.

[Joel]

3g has better coverage than Edge?

Not from my experience. And as for HSDPA access? I've heard tell that if you go to a particular street in Leeds, and stand on one leg, then you can get a 3.5g signal for a second or two.

In York, options are 3G normal (as well as Edge). Go outside of the city, then you will have Edge - head further afield and you might not get that. Get right up into the dales, you are lucky to get any signal at all.

"My car does 165mph!!! Your tractor is lucky to do 30mph"

"Lets race to the end of this farm track then....."

No point getting a phone that runs on a service that ain't there.....

Of course, all those community wifi broadband networks we were installing prior to ADSL rollout suddenly have a new lease of life.....

[Steven Raith]

Coverage

Interstingly, I could get a reliable T-Mobile HSDPA signal in Scarborough - and most of the surrounding areas, which genuinely shocked me. Although I suppose it is a big tourist area so the infrastructure would be better there than, say, north wales. I couldn't even get a signal on my O2 XDA a few years ago at Anglesey race circuit. At all!

Fair point about EDGE being more available, but having 3/3.5G as an option would be nice. iPhone II etc fingers crossed and so on.

Steven R

[Landlord]

Ha ha ha :)

"I don't know about how things stack up in whinging-pom-territory, but in Australia if the iPhone were to come out with plans that match what the US have on AT&T it would be the best value from any telco..."

That's because when you get reamed all you do is shrug, hyperaspirate a little and throi another shrimp on the barbie. Us pommies won't put up with it, though.

As for being chippy, you can't blame us when we're being patronised by a bunch of colonising yanks hell bent on foisting antedeluvian technology onto us Victorian savages, now, can you?

As it goes, I reckon the iPhone is a fine piece of engineering but it's not well suited to European markets. iPhone fanbois, though, are as rabid, rude and obnoxious as ever.