Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Will the iPhone succeed in the UK?

Paddy Power hve opened some interesting markets on the iPhone. I think that the iPhone is overpriced (for the technology it offers), depite the innovative GUI. As an (expensive, 18 month) contract phone, it is not ideally suited as a Christms present. It is only being sold on a single network, O2 for £269 + £35 month - UK consumers are not used to spending this mount on a phone AND a significant monthly expenditure. The fact that is hard to make carrier free (as well as the technical weaknesses) will not endear it to tech. fans.

In the US, there waa a price cut after 2 months, despite the initial hype. I am thefore having 1pt (max allowed) on the folloing two bets:

How many iPhones will be sold before Christmas? < 150,000 (5-1) ... O2 are expecting approx 200,000 sales, so this is not significantly less than their estimates.

iphone price be reduced in the UK? Nov 07 - Jan 08 (5-1) ... I can see a price drop in January 08 when sles do not meet expectations.

2 comments:

The Ante Poster said...

I'd argue that 25% less than expected actually IS a significant drop, it would be strange for projected sales for a copmpany that large to go that badly awry.
But as for the price cut, I'll go for that. Nice.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe Paddy Power are not paying out on number of sales...! It's clear they have sold no where near 150,000 units! They retunred my stake, I argued a bit but they won't pay out.

Shocking...