For any of our UK readers, you might want to check out the Carphone Warehouse, who are the first to be distributing BlackBerrys across three carriers: O2, T-Mobile and Orange. Right now they’re carrying the BlackBerry 8100, the BlackBerry 8300, and the BlackBerry 8800. Although it’s out of stock right now, the only handset that you’d be paying for is the 8300, and even then it’s only £39.99. The Warehouse is also throwing in 1 GB microSD cards just for signing up. If you ever decide you want to switch to another carrier, you can get up to £20 off on your next phone with a trade-in. Not too shabby at all!
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BlackBerry for 3 carriers under one roof
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Thanks to the Pearl, O2′s BlackBerry sales in Ireland are reaching unprecedented levels.
“We’re now doing the same volume on a month-to-month basis that it took us to do in the first two years of selling BlackBerry products,†said Billy D’Arcy, O2’s head of business sales and services.
D’Arcy goes over some key points that explain the recent explosion, and why sales haven’t been better over the six years that O2 has been carrying BlackBerry devices. For one, he says that it takes time for the technology to work into the roots of the business community as a viable solution. It takes a lot of convincing to get a company to adopt a single device as the wide-spanning standard.
Second, the way that the Pearl has softened the business edge off BlackBerry has had tremendous effect on the perceptions of the brand. Surely the Curve’s release there last Wednesday will do well to further emphasize that level of appeal. Thirdly, changes in labour paradigms have made working from home more acceptable than it once was. Instead of being seen as invasive, BlackBerrys are letting folks telecommute.
The numbers for Q1 are in, and British carrier O2 is trouncing most competitors in the area. Total UK subscribers after Q1 total up to 67.5 million. Just for sense of scale, that’s more than twice the population of Canada. Egad. In terms of straight-up earnings, O2 pulled in £1,170 million, with runner-up Vodafone garnering an estimated £1,287 million. As for customers, Vodafone led with more than 600,000 net additions. Even though Vodafone’s been doing decently in the stock market, with O2 packing the Curve, it’ll be a little tougher for Vodafone to keep those customer numbers up.
