Bumper New Year’s Eve Ahead for O2

06/11/2007

O2 is gearing up for a New Year’s Eve celebration like never before. Ahead of the much publicized launch of the Apple iPhone in the UK, the carrier has predicted that over 200,000 iPhones will be sold by the New Year. O2 is the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone in the UK. Apple’s equivalent partner in the US is AT&T.

O2’s employees will be hoping for a New Year’s Eve bonus if the sales forecasts are correct. The iPhone will retail at £269 with customers obligated to sign contracts with O2 for £35 per month over 18 months. This means the iPhone will cost a UK consumer £899 compared with $399 in the US.

Apple and O2 are confident consumers will brave the expense to own one of the coveted iPhones. They have proved extremely popular in America, thanks to their ability to play music as well as enable web browsing besides acting as a normal mobile phone. Apple claims that since the launch in the US on June 29, 1.4 million iPhones have been sold.

Matthew Key, chief executive of 02's UK business, has revealed that O2 has ordered hundreds of thousands of iPhones from Apple and said he expects a couple of hundred thousand iPhones to be sold by New Year’s Eve.

Meanwhile hackers have pledged to unlock iPhones in the UK to make them compatible on networks other than 02 soon after the device is released in the UK. Apple also encountered problems with hackers in the US where it estimated that one in six of the 1.4 million iPhones sold were unlocked.