World of Apple

O2 UK has posted the pricing for the new iPhone 3GS on its website, they are offering pricing for both Pay Monthly and Pay as you Go customers.

For Pay Montly customers who are looking to have a 24 month contract the iPhone 3GS 16GB will cost £87 on the £35 per month tariff and will be free on all the others. The iPhone 3GS 32GB will cost at most £175 or as little as £0.

For those Pay Monthly customers who wish to only have an 18 month contract the iPhone 3GS 16GB will start at £185 and work its way down to free, the 32GB model will be at most £274 down to £97 on a £73 per month tariff.

For customers wishing to pick up an iPhone 3GS on Pay as you Go, the 16GB model will cost £440.40 and the 32GB £538.30.

O2 will also be offering MMS and Internet tethering. An MMS message will cost four normal texts on Pay Monthly where are PAYG users will pay a hefty 25p.

O2 will only offer iPhone tethering with an applicable bolt on, a 3GB bolt on will cost £15 a month with a 10GB capped bolt on costing £29 per month.

The iPhone 3GS will be available in O2 stores, O2 online store, Apple retail stores and Carphone Warehouse stores on June 19.

During today’s WWDC keynote Apple introduced the new iPhone 3GS, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including improved speed and performance—up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G—with longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control. iPhone 3GS includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS, Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard and more. iPhone 3GS customers get access to more than 50,000 applications from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, the largest application store in the world where customers have already downloaded over one billion apps. iPhone 3GS offers twice the capacity for the same price with a 16GB model for just $199 and a new 32GB model for just $299. And beginning today, iPhone 3G is available at the breakthrough price of just $99 for the 8GB model—a huge milestone for the high end smartphone market.

“iPhone 3GS is the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet and we think people will love the incredible new features including autofocus camera, video recording and the freedom of voice control,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of WorldWide Product Marketing. “And with a breakthrough price of $99, we are thrilled to get iPhone 3G into the hands of even more users who want them.”

iPhone 3GS offers incredible speed and performance, on average up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G, so you can render web pages quicker and launch applications faster. iPhone 3GS takes advantage of the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard for stunning high-quality 3D graphics, making mobile gaming and other graphic intense applications better than ever. iPhone 3GS is not only faster, but with longer battery life you can watch more videos, listen to more music, browse the Internet or keep using your favorite apps even longer. The new iPhone 3GS also supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA for faster networking speeds.

iPhone 3GS features a new 3 megapixel autofocus camera that takes amazing pictures and video, making it easier than ever to capture, edit and share those moments instantly with family and friends. The new autofocus camera adjusts focus, exposure, color and contrast for the best possible image and includes an automatic macro focus for extra close up shots. With the new “tap to focus” feature, you simply touch the display to select an object or area of interest and the camera automatically re-adjusts focus and exposure. You can record incredible high-quality video clips and edit them right on your iPhone 3GS by simply trimming the start and stop points. With iPhone 3GS you can send photos and video by email or MMS and post them to MobileMe or YouTube with just one tap.

The voice control feature in iPhone 3GS offers hands free operation for both iPhone and iPod functions. Simply speak the appropriate commands into the built-in microphone or headset microphone to dial by name or number. With voice control you can play your favorite music by artist, album or playlist and activate the Genius feature by saying “play more songs like this.” You can also tell iPhone to pause the music, play the next track, turn on shuffle or ask, “What’s playing right now?”

iPhone 3GS features a new built-in digital compass for instant navigation. The Compass app shows you which way you are headed and rotates as you change direction. You can orient yourself to true north or magnetic north, and iPhone’s built-in GPS automatically displays the coordinates of your current location. The new built-in digital compass is also integrated within Maps, so it automatically orients any map to the direction you are facing.

iPhone 3GS provides new accessibility features including VoiceOver, a screen reader that speaks what appears on the iPhone 3GS display, enabling visually impaired users to make calls, read email, browse web pages, play music and run applications. The new universal Zoom function magnifies the entire screen, and the White on Black feature reverses the colors on screen to provide higher contrast for people with low vision. iPhone 3GS also supports Mono Audio which combines left and right audio channels so that they can be heard in both earbuds for those with hearing loss in one ear.

Phone 3G S will be available in the US on June 19 for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and just $299 (US) for the new 32GB model in both Apple and AT&T’s retail and online stores. iPhone 3GS will be available in the UK on June 19 with pricing available later.

On the back of rumours of an iPhone price cut in the UK, O2 has announced that it will be introducing new 24-month tariffs starting April 3.

Customers who sign up to the 24 month tariff can get the 8GB iPhone 3G for free at £34.26 per month and the 16GB iPhone 3G for free at £44.05 per month.

The tariffs have the same benefits as an 18-month tariff including visual voicemail, unlimited UK data and unlimited access to over 9,500 public Wi-Fi hotspots.

UK based Mobile website is reporting that O2 will tweak the pricing of the iPhone in May, ahead of a new iPhone in June or July.

According to Mobile the iPhone 3G which is currently between £59 and £159 upfront will drop to free on tariffs of £35 and £45.

The report goes onto mention that Orange is in talks with Apple to allow the iPhone to be available from both O2 and Orange in the UK. Orange currently sells the iPhone in 27 other countries including France and Poland.

UK iPhone carrier O2 has announced that it has sold over one million iPhones while at the same time reported a 10% rise in revenues.

O2 which is owned by Spanish firm Telefónica gained 390,000 new mobile phone customers in the last quarter of 2008 strengthening its position as the UK’s largest mobile phone carrier.

O2 began selling the iPhone in November 2007 and has now sold over a million iPhones with no signs of sales slowing.

“iPhone sales are continuing to accelerate,” said Matthew Key, chairman and chief executive of Telefónica Europe. “And we have been pretty stunned at the results of our pre-pay offer, which is £342.33 for a year’s data usage included.”

O2 UK has today finally revealed details of how the iPhone 3G will be priced on it’s pay-as-you-go tariffs as well as when the device will be available.

O2 has announced that the unsubsidised iPhone 3G will be available for £350 ($630) and £400 ($720) for the 8GB and 16GB models.

Although once signed up users won’t be forced into a contract, they will be obliged to top-up an amount each month to receive a certain amount of benefits.

Paying between £10 and £14 each month will see users receiving a bonus 500 minutes of call time to any UK home phone or O2 mobile; paying between £15 and £29 adds 1,000 minutes under the same terms, while £30 or more provides unlimited calls.

Unlimited Internet access within the UK, including 3G and O2 Wi-Fi, is free for the first year of service but will cost £10 per month afterwards. Text messages aren’t included and cost 10p each.

The iPhone 3G will be available on pay-as-you-go from O2 starting September 16th.

O2 announced during their Q2 financial results last week that the company has gained over 137,000 new subscribers who are on a monthly contract. The new subscribers were reportedly gained solely from the iPhone.

The figure represents a 80.8% increase in subscribers for the same quarter the year before.

Additionally O2 stated that they have a “multi-year” contract with Apple to sell the iPhone exclusively in the UK after rumours pointed towards Orange picking up the exclusivity before the years end. Adding that the iPhone had not been on sale for a full year in the UK.

Electric Pig claims that the exclusive agreement between O2 and Apple in the UK is due to “time-out” by the end of the year. The site also claims that “credible sources” have said that Orange intends to step-in as a second carrier.

According to the site Orange could begin offering the iPhone 3G as soon as October.

Orange already sells the iPhone in France, Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Africa.

Macenstein has published an email from O2 sales director, Stephen Shurrock. The email is an apology for the poor service offered during O2′s pre-order fiasco earlier this week.

Shurrock goes into some detail on how O2 strengthened its online systems and tested them prior to launch:

we had invested heavily to add a huge amount of additional capacity, 250 times its normal rate, and back-up systems. We tested this carefully in advance. The massive simultaneous crush, partly created by our open and honest communications approach with the registered community, exceeded even our worst case assumptions. Demand was at 13,000 orders per second. Frankly, we have to admit we just weren’t prepared for this unprecedented level of demand. No website is.

The email continues to state that the next opportunity to purchase an iPhone 3G in the UK will be Friday morning although the director states that “it is likely that stock will be in very short supply for some weeks to come.” and “The amount of devices [per store] will vary… on average a few dozen iPhones in each”.

Full email below.

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O2 has released a press release confirming this mornings issues when the official carrier of the iPhone 3G in the UK had to pull its online pre-ordering system.

O2 writes that demand for the revolutionary device is already at unprecedented levels, far in excess of the original iPhone.

“We’ve never seen any mobile device create the excitement and demand of the iPhone 3G,” said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 in the UK. “We want to ensure that everyone who wants an iPhone 3G can get one so we’ll be working with Apple to continually replenish our supplies throughout the summer.”

In response to this mornings issues, O2 confirms that the response was so great that the online store completely sold out of iPhone 3Gs within just a few hours. Though O2 had invested several million pounds to increase the order capacity of the site (with order processing capacity increased by over 250 times its normal rate), at times the site still couldn’t process the sheer weight of demand.

Full press release below.

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