5% of O2 UK's customers are iPhone addicts, which is equivalent to approximately 1 million users. Around the time the carrier will loose its iPhone exclusivity in the UK, a new rising star will hit O2 UK store shelves in the Palm Pre. We aren't fans of exclusive carrier agreements in general here at infoSync, and now that the iPhone is appearing on more networks around the world, it'll definitely be positive for the iPhone sales numbers.
Like the iPhone two years ago, the Palm Pre will be an O2 exclusive at introduction in the UK, meaning that it'll be a signature phone rather than the "mass market" approach Palm originally hoped for (and that Apple has got its eyes up for recently). It's difficult to predict exactly how many units will be shipped of the Palm Pre through O2 UK, but it would be natural to believe that it wouldn't come close to the iPhone numbers above.
To hold 5% of a carrier's customers is quite an achievement in an environment where Nokia and Samsung are strong players. If we have to say a number, we would guess that Palm would have the potential of selling 200,000 units of the Palm Pre through O2 UK, and possibly twice as much if it gets distributed in all of Telefonica O2's markets in Europe eventually. It'll for instance go on sale through O2 Germany, but Germany is mainly Deutsche Telekom's domain, the owner of the T-Mobile brand (Apple, on the other hand, almost nailed key carriers in every country at first).
To be talking about a potential of less than 500,000 units might sound like a low number to Palm fans out there, but it's important to keep in mind that exclusivity even held the iPhone back around the world (and likely still does in the U.S.), despite its massive brand value. While the iPhone itself is a key to Apple's success, the Palm Pre is all about the hard-selling potential of WebOS.
Already at the introduction of the Palm Pre, we said that Palm needed to go after business users, and the new Palm WebOS 1.2 offers a range of improvements in that direction. There's of course also the upcoming Palm Pixi, but even more so than the Palm Pre, it could end up as a niche phone. And niche markets are what most mobile players are trying to get out of nowadays.
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