So O2 has won the exclusive right to iPhone in the UK; but what a price! With the battle heating up between operators, device manufacturers and content providers to divide the spoils of user revenue, this seems to be a massive concession for a UK operator.
[gratuitous picture of an iPhone... in case you can't recall how attractive it is]
Capitulating 40% of iPhone associated revenues can't make sense to anyone vaguely familiar with thin operator margins. Vodafone definitely wasn't having any of it. But maybe this is just a big step along the ultimately inevitable path to complete commoditisation of mobile operations. The time has come for the rise of the device and equally the content now reachable following the relatively recent collapse of the walled gardens. This shift in the landscape also represents exciting opportunities to the marketing communicator looking to extend brand presence into consumers' mobile life.
Ben Hunt says:
O2 has clearly balanced the potential for customer acquisitions (and pretty good customers, you'd have thought) with the lower ARPUs they might expect and decided that the credibility and publicity that Apple will bring to its brand is worth the trade-off.
And in the short-term it probably is. Apple magically spreads its gold dust on those companies associated with it, and there's no reason to believe that will not be the question here.
But the long-term is a different matter. Having surrendered itself to this model once, O2 might well find itself under pressure to do it time and again, the consequences of which could be far-reaching and damaging.
18 September 2007 — 4:42 pm