Got a tip for us? Share it...
• • RSS

Only a Few Dozen iPhones in UK's O2 and Carphone Warehouse Locations

Tuesday July 8, 2008 12:56 pm PDT by Arnold Kim
Macenstein republishes an email written from Stephen Shurrock, O2's Sales Director, apologizing to a customer about the poor experience with O2's iPhone launch. He explains the massive traffic that the site received:

We run one of the busiest and most robust web stores in the UK. I appreciate that it is little comfort to you given your experience, but 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 werent prepared for this unprecedented level of demand. No website is.

Shurrock also notes that the next opportunity to get an iPhone 3G in the U.K. will be on launch day at O2 and Carphone Warehouse locations. Apple will also have supply but will only be accepting new customer contracts.

Most concerning is that he describes that there will only be "on average a few dozen iPhones in each O2 or CPW store."

So, if you are an existing O2 customer and wish to upgrade to the iPhone 3G, you better get in line now.
[ 56 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
FreeState
Posted: 51 months ago
"Demand was at 13,000 orders per second."

Wow. Thats just amazing.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
cnorth3
Posted: 51 months ago
Too late to buy online!!!

Check out the Reuters story
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
friekunater
Posted: 51 months ago

"Demand was at 13,000 orders per second."

Wow. Thats just amazing.




yeah, holy crap!!!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
captain kaos
Posted: 51 months ago
Yeah, here you go, either O2's is just saying this to whip up excitement for friday, or the numbers are true and both Apple (with stocking the UK) or O2 have really ballsed this up royaly. Why is it we're getting f**ed about with this released. Im buying a 1st gen, sod O2 and Apple.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
friekunater
Posted: 51 months ago
I hope people down on Wall Street are reading this -- 13000 orders per second!! AAPL is going to skyrocket!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
bluebomberman
Posted: 51 months ago
Clearly, O2 should have tried a lottery system instead.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
johnnyjibbs
Posted: 51 months ago
I think the 13,000 was server requests or peak load. Or most of us clicking refresh 2000 times since none of us could get through!

I'm worried about Friday. Apple will be selling iPhones to new customers only, so presumably as a non-iPhone but current O2 contract holder I can't use them. There are only a dozen or so Apple Stores in London, most of which are in shopping centres, and I would imagine that if any store has an overnight queue it will be the flagship store on Regents Street. There are many more O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores but I worry that units will be spread far more thinly across these.

I'm taking the gamble of taking the first tube to one of the less central O2 stores and hoping that there won't be too many people there. I could quite easily see people coming out of clubs in the centre, seeing some queues and then thinking they could get a piece of the action.

I'm going to swing by my intended O2 store on Thursday night to confirm that they will be open and expecting units, and to check that a line has not already formed! There are going to be a lot of disappointed people on Friday, not to mention many weeks to come.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
MacTheSpoon
Posted: 51 months ago
I'm planning on swinging leisurely by an Apple store this Friday to get my new iPhone 3G, didn't expect there'd be any lines this time around. But now that I think about it, I've heard from several of my friends that they're going to be first-time iPhone buyers... which could indicate a lot more demand out there than I figured.

I hope they don't run out of stock here in the US, too!! I guess at least I've got my iPhone 2.5G to keep using for a while if they do.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
Bevz
Posted: 51 months ago
Ok, 13,000 per second is a lot; fair play. BUT, they MUST have known that if they text 100,000 customers at 8am, a load of them are gonna go straight onto their computers and try and order an iphone... I think they're even bigger idiots now as they've said they didn't have any idea they would get that response... Why? Why didn't they think they'd get that response, did they think the 100,000 people who signed up to get a text message were just kidding??!

If they wanted to protect their servers and limit the number of simultaneous orders they could have a) staggered the text messages randomly throughout the day or b) did a soft launch and simply relied on word of mouth to spread the news that you could order online... At least that way the phones would have gone to the "faithful" ;)

As for O2 stores only having a few dozen iphone's on launch day; the cynical side of me thinks "yeah right, just another way to whip everyone up into a frenzy", but the pessimistic side of me thinks "oh great; we're getter short-changed / shafted yet again...."

I honestly don't know what to think now... I'm tempted to just hang onto my gen 1 for a while and order the 3g model in a few weeks online, and in the meantime just have fun with the app store until my phone arrives.

I'm afraid the whole 6 hours of O2 online crap i went through has taken the edge off my excitement about this launch.... This is all just starting to smell of corporate BS....

I don't think O2 are being honest with their customers in ANY way whatsoever. I just wish i could just order straight from Apple, i trust them (rightly or wrongly)...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
dopeytree
Posted: 51 months ago
i put my card details in but nothing loading after so i'm not too sure whats going to happen i probably didn't get through. But I'm not happy as i though as a current iphone user i was garanteed a new iphone reserved thats what my text from o2 says!?

I live in street so i hope the tiny o2 shop gets some iphones and they have some left!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives

[ Read All Comments ]