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Apple iPhone 'fastest selling product of all time'
Last updated at 22:52pm on 12.11.07Mobile phone giant O2 today said that the iPhone was its fastest selling product of all time after the gadget went on sale in the UK on Friday.
The group, which is owned by Spain's Telefonica, confirmed they had sold tens of thousands of the hotly hyped product.
The rush to buy iPhones saw the number of visitors to O2 stores soar to three times those recorded in the same weekend last year, according to the group.
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Hot product: The Apple iPhone
O2 expects to sell "a couple of hundred thousand" iPhones over Christmas and New Year.
It also today reiterated forecasts for UK revenue growth of between 15 per cent and 18 per cent, with hopes to perform at the top end of those expectations.
The group has already seen like-for-like revenues rise by 10% in the first nine months of the year, according to its third quarter results out today.
Average revenue per UK user in the quarter rose from £23.40 last year to £24.30, added the group. O2 now has around 18 million customers in the UK alone.
It said that while the iPhone handset will help boost performance, customers with the phone will only represent a fraction of its total base.
O2 is the exclusive mobile network for iPhone handsets in the UK after beating off competition from rivals such as Vodafone.
The handsets went on sale simultaneously at around 1,300 branches of Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse and their websites on Friday.
Several hundred customers were waiting outside the Apple store on London's Regent Street before the doors opened in a bid to get their hands on the new phone.
The phone's features include a camera, an MP3 and video player, mobile phone and internet services such as email, text messaging, web browsing, visual voicemail and wireless connectivity.
The iPhone handsets went on sale in the US on June 29.
Reader views (8)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
"Because of the iPod the music industry has had to change.."
Because of the internet and electronic music formats that can be put onto any electronic players the music industry has had and will have to change.
The iphone is no risk to the mass market of phone handsets, it is a niche product. Just like Mac computers.
- Steve, London, UK
David your comments sound a little overhyped and are certainly not grounded in fact. The iPhone, like the iPod, have addressed major technological and practical issues to deliver consumer products that move their respective industries forwards. Because of the iPod the music industry has had to change, because of the iPhone other handset manufacturers will have to up their game in product development.
- Paul, London
O2 have a lot tied up in this product launch. Can you imagine the commitment they had to give to Apple to gain exclusive rights to retail this device. They have to hype the release otherwise they may be saddled with thousands of phones they cannot sell. I've seen the phone and it is good but I think I will wait until O2 put them on offer (after Christmas I imagine).
- Dan, Manchester
From what I have read and seen on this phone, it owes more to the overhyped association with the overhyped ipod than it does to being innovative or even just being good.
- David Kitemaker-Hall, London, UK
Yes, if you actually read what they say it is their (O2's) best selling product not the best ever selling product.
- Steve, London, UK
Charlie, they might if they're hoping that people like you misunderstand "O2's fastest-selling product of all time" as "the fastest-selling product of all time", which it clearly isn't.
- Ollie, London
Alternatively, Trevor, it could simply be that the iPhone is simply the fastest-selling product of all time. If sales were poor then O2 would hardly draw attention to it with a press release...
- Charlie, London
Which of course means absolutely nothing, every other mobile phone is available across all providers meaning that the market share of most phones is spread across at least 3 providers. I don't know anyone who's bought one and I noticed that there weren't any queues in either the Carphone Warehouse or the O2 shop on the evening of its much overhyped launch, sounds like O2 are trying to big the phone up as it hasn't had the impact they were expecting.
- Trevor Roll, London
