UK iPhone carrier O2 added 137,596 pay-monthly customers - and says the Apple device helped drive these gains.
These new customers turned up in advance of the introduction of the iPhone 3G, suggesting the price cut which presaged the launch of the new that was applied against units of the old model did the trick.
The company has revealed its Q2 financial results, and these confirm gains. Mobile data revenues grew 46 per cent year-on-year and also reported 12.1 per cent growth year-on-year for its data average revenue per user.
The addition of 137,596 new customers is 80.8 per cent more people than who signed-up new to O2 in the same period last year. And the iPhone has become the network's fastest selling mobile phone ever.
These slices of good news come as the company moves to deny a report in The Guardian today which claimed the exclusive nature of the relationship between Apple and O2 as under threat.
There has been speculation that Orange will also gain rights to carry iPhone, and that the relationship between Apple and O2 is rocky. An O2 spokesperson denied this, telling Macworld: "We have an excellent relationship with Apple. In the UK, we have a multi-year exclusive partnership with Apple which we are only one year into." Carphone Warehouse this week revealed itself to have seen “a sharp pick-up in subscription connections on the back of the iPhone 3G launch”, but it didn’t give numbers and it has almost halved its target for annual broadband customer additions.
Dominic Hulewicz, O2’s Head of Converged Services, has said of the iPhone: “We’re seeing phenomenal demand. I was staggered. We have people who were early adopters of the iPhone; now we also have demand from the corporate market"
Telefnica O2 Ireland showed an improved performance on customer growth and announced TheO2 Dublin, launching December 2008.
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