Slash Lane
Beginning February 1st, iPhone customers on a £35 per month contract will
get 600 minutes instead of 200 and "more than double" the plan's current 200 text message allotment. Meanwhile, the £45 per month plan will see its offerings upgraded to those of the existing £55 package, which includes 1200 minutes and 500 text messages.
As a result, O2 said it plans to completely dissolve its existing £55 plan, replacing it with a "super-tier" £75 offering that will include 3000 minutes and 500 text messages per month. The £269 cost of the iPhone, as well as the 18-month contract requirement will remain unchanged.
Customers who were on the £55 tariff will have the option to either save £10 per month or take the new £75 tariff. O2 said it plans to transition all its iPhone customers to the new tariffs in February, allowing them to benefit from the rate reductions by mid-March.
Thus far, sales of the iPhone in the UK — like that of Germany and France — have underperformed. According to a published report earlier this month, O2 managed to sell 190,000 of the touch-screen handsets in the two months following its launch on November 9th. That figure, however, is said to have fallen short of a "conservative" 200,000 internal unit estimate by the carrier.
While O2 has not published any official figures on iPhone sales, it did say the device has help triple its retail store traffic. The spike is believed to have provided a surge in the carrier's sales for the end of 2007 regardless of how many customers eventually chose the iPhone over an alternative.
O2 is expected to capitalize on the revised iPhone plans beginning next month, as the rate reductions are likely to finally sway some fence sitters towards the Apple handheld.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
75 Comments
Certainly a move in the right direction, I already have the £35 a month tarrif, and my bill hasn't exceeded this amount yet, but I'm not a heavy user of my private mobile, my corporate blackberry, well that's another story.
I'm not going to save any money just get more minutes/txts included, not a bad thing, but more frequent users are going to see the real benefit here. Should help with sales, this is the first move, but I suspect not the last as the £269 price of the handset is still going to be the main sticking point as it's an up front charge, that can't be disguised.
Well done o2, but don't stop there!
The Phone sales are poor because the Iphone is great MP3 player with a disappointing phone attached. In order to bring this into focus did anyone notice that during the Jobs keynote he mentioned the 'new function' to allow iphone users to send SMS to multiple recipients. I am sure I have been able to do that with a variety of phones since the last century!
This is great news. I shall be definitely purchasing an iPhone now. Before it was too much of a hit to take on the tariff compared to my existing one, now it is much more balanced (especially considering the unlimited data).
Likely I am not the only one - sales should definitely pick up now.
The cynic in me suggests that this is Apple/O2 clearing the backrooms full of iPhone stock. Having said that, they are making room for the next iPhone for sure.
What does "over 400" txt messages mean????