01/12/2009, 9:45am, EST
Monday, January 12th
Orange triples past iPhone sales in Dec.
The official iPhone carrier for France, Orange, achieved solid sales during the Christmas season, according to national newspaper La Tribune. People within Orange are said to be claiming triple the sales of December 2007, or approximately 210,000 phones. Between November 28th and December 31st of 2007, the company is known to have sold roughly 70,000 iPhones.
It is not known whether the new figures reflect French performance alone, as before, or if Orange is counting the expanded regions brought in with the iPhone 3G, including Austria and several African countries. Orange has generally been reticent about providing detailed sales information, but it is likely that sales have improved for reasons such as the support of European-standard 3G broadband.
Sales are likely to become more widely distributed, however, thanks to a recent government ruling which has let other companies sell the iPhone in France, if only on a temporary basis. Bouygues Telecom has accused Orange of hurting fair competition in France through its exclusive deal with Apple; though French law forced the creation of an unlocked iPhone in 2007, it could only be bought through Orange channels.
Filed under: iPhone
Other story tags: iPhone 3G, Orange, France, Bouygues
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Exclusives
That's why they call them exclusives. No doubt many carriers are solicited and the balking comes when something that didn't look successful to them turns out to be successful. The bandwagon effect!
In the US a company doesn't HAVE to sell anything to a particular distributor, but once you do, then going back (to punish someone for example) is quite hard to do.
Do the French businesses complain about everything? What about the CE that has to be marked on so many packages going into France. Another expense, another country flexing its muscles.
Boo-hoo.