UK iPhone

So two more online retailers are taking “pre-orders” for iPhone. One is Mobileshop.com: the interesting thing here is the “expected delivery date” of 15 December 2007. This is slightly beyond the previously-announced third quarter launch date.

I can’t give you a link to the page on mobiles.co.uk because they have taken it down, but reportedly it showed iPhone available on either O2 or Voda. Mobiles.co.uk was of course recently purchased by Carphone Warehouse, which has already tipped its hand on O2 in its own website slipup. But it may have nothing to do with CW: I doubt the first thing an acquirer does is get its new subsidiary to put phantom pages up on its website.

What does all this mean? Probably nothing: as I’ve said before, taking pre-orders doesn’t mean anything. Anyone can do it, and if you don’t take any money, there’s no obligation to the orderer. It’s just an expression of interest. If you run a mobile website, you might as well take pre-orders: if you do get any iPhones in, just email the pre-orderers and unload them. If not, no harm done: just say “After careful consideration of the product we have decided not to stock iPhone. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.