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Wireless Federation » archive for 'Carphone Warehouse'

Nokia ‘Comes With Music’ to provide unlimited music downloads (UK)

  • September 2nd, 2008
  • 11:16 am

Nokia’s mobile music services, Comes With Music, which will be launching in UK next month, and in continental Europe and Asia next year.
Nokia is joining hands with mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse, which has more than 800 shops and is Apple’s sole independent distributor of the iPhone in UK, to stock the phone.
Nokia’s purpose is to compete with Apple iPhone and iTunes music service.
Carphone will start selling Apple’s 3G iPhone on pay-as-you-go deals from later this month.
Buyers of the Nokia handset will be getting unlimited music downloads for a year—2.1 million on launch, about quarter on iTunes—and will then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to retain the service.
Unlike other unlimited music services, if users choose not to buy a new device after a year, they can store and keep all the tracks already downloaded, and will also still be able to send texts and make calls.
   

Nokia ‘Comes With Music’ to provide unlimited music downloads (UK)

  • September 2nd, 2008
  • 6:48 am

Nokia’s mobile music services, Comes With Music, which will be launching in UK next month, and in continental Europe and Asia next year.
Nokia is joining hands with mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse, which has more than 800 shops and is Apple’s sole independent distributor of the iPhone in UK, to stock the phone.
Nokia’s purpose is to compete with Apple iPhone and iTunes music service.
Carphone will start selling Apple’s 3G iPhone on pay-as-you-go deals from later this month.
Buyers of the Nokia handset will be getting unlimited music downloads for a year and will then have to pay a monthly subscription fee to retain the service.
Unlike other unlimited music services, if users choose not to buy a new device after a year, they can store and keep all the tracks already downloaded, and will also still be able to send texts and make calls.
   

Youth’s best friend - Mobile! (UK)

  • July 18th, 2008
  • 1:05 pm

According to the annual Mobile Life Report from the Carphone Warehouse, youngsters consider their mobile phone as their best friend and choose it over all other forms of electrical entertainment.  

The report is the latest stage of a research project started in 2006 assesing the impact of mobile phones on people’s lives. The fifth report titled, Mobile Life Report 2008: the connected world, questioned 6,000 people in the UK and US to explore the relationship adults and youngsters have with mobile and internet technology.

O2 and Apple System’s dispute causes no harm to iPhone demand (UK)

  • July 18th, 2008
  • 10:47 am

O2 has denied the it’s dispute with Apple over stock shortages of the in-demand 3G iPhone.

While Apple stores have an abundant supply of the device, the O2 and Carphone Warehouse are suffering a lengthy wait for the second batch. The source said that O2 had been put on the back foot by Apple’s plan of launching the phone pre-date.

According to the latest developments are unlikely to have improved the relationship between the two companies.

An O2 spokesperson denied that the issue had caused resentment between the companies. However, the problems of low stock, and both O2 and Apple’s system hitches, haven’t failed to dampen demand for the 3G iPhone, which Apple claimed  to have sold over one million in just three days after the launch.

   

O2 UK sees 200,000 iPhones sold by New Year (UK)

  • November 5th, 2007
  • 12:14 pm

O2 UK expects to sell around 200,000 iPhones by the start of the New Year. Sales will start on 9 November, and Matthew Key, CEO of O2’s UK business, told the Financial Times he expected “a couple of hundred thousand” iPhones to be sold in the first two months. O2 has ordered “hundreds of thousands” of iPhones from Apple for its stores and online outlets as well as shops run by Carphone Warehouse. After the June launch in the US, 1 million iPhones were sold in just under two and a half months. The iPhone will sell for GBP 269 in the UK, and customers will have to take out an O2 contract for at least GBP 35 per month for 18 months. Key said O2 expects to get a 3G version of the iPhone in the second half of next year. Separately, Key told the Daily Telegraph that the company has decided to scrap a fair use policy for iPhone data services. While advertising data use as “unlimited” on the iPhone plans, O2 had also planned a data cap pf 200 MB per month. However, Key said the company has now decided to implement a “market first” and not have any fair use cap. The Independent meanwhile reports that O2 will add 1,400 extra staff for the iPhone, including 700 call centre workers and 700 shop employees.

   

Carphone partners with Vodafone for MVNO (UK)

  • October 25th, 2007
  • 1:05 pm

Carphone Warehouse has partnered with Vodafone UK to launch a new mobile service called Talkmobile. The MVNO will offer postpaid contracts, starting at GBP 12 per month for a period of nine months, aiming to capture prepaid users who are reluctant to sign up for long contracts. Talkmobile will rent network capacity from Vodafone. Carphone already runs the MVNOs Fresh and TalkTalk Mobile using the T-Mobile network, and Mobile World offering low-cost international calls.

   

Carphone Warehouse reports Q2 connections up 19.2% (UK)

  • October 10th, 2007
  • 2:58 pm

Carphone Warehouse reported connections at its mobile distribution business of 2.8 million for the 13 weeks to 29 September, up 19.2 percent from the year-earlier period. The owner of The Phone House said in a trading update that prepay connections grew 26.8 percent to 1.6 million and subscription lines were up 9.3 percent to 1.1 million. The group opened 60 new stores in the period for a total 2,337. At the company’s fixed-line business in the UK, it gained 89,000 new broadband customers during the fiscal second quarter, for a total 2.5 million. Growth was helped by a free laptop offer at its AOL unit in September. Carphone expects to add 200,000 to 250,000 broadband customers in the second half of its fiscal year. It now has 55 percent of its broadband customer base connected to its LLU network, which includes 1,384 unbundled exchanges for TalkTalk and 828 for AOL. The voice customer base reached 2.7 million, returning to growth in the quarter amid success at selling voice to the AOL customer base. Carphone forecast pretax profits of GBP 53-56 million for the first half; it will report full interim results on 8 November.

   

Apple confirms O2 as UK iPhone distributor (UK)

  • September 19th, 2007
  • 2:41 pm

Apple has confirmed that mobile operator O2 will have exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in the UK. The mobile phone with built-in music player will be available from 9 November, from O2, Apple and Carphone Warehouse stores, for a price of GBP 269 for the 8 GB model. O2 has introduced three tariff plans for iPhone users, all including unlimited mobile data use and unlimited access to The Cloud network of 7,500 Wi-Fi hot spots. The tariff plans range from GBP 35 per month for 200 minutes and 200 texts, to GBP 55 per month for 1,200 minutes and 500 texts. All iPhone sales will require an 18-month contract with O2.

   

O2, Carphone Warehouse set to unveil iPhone deal - report (UK)

  • September 18th, 2007
  • 2:20 pm

UK mobile operator O2 and retailer Carphone Warehouse will unveil on 18 September an exclusive deal to sell Apple’s iPhone in the UK, reports the Guardian. The deal is said to give Apple a big share of the money made on the handset, with O2 returning to Apple as much as 40 percent of any revenues it makes from customers’ use of the device. Out of O2’s share also comes a commission and further revenue share with Carphone Warehouse, which will be the only independent retailer to offer the handset. Carphone was added to the deal because of Apple’s fears that O2 did not have a big enough retail presence in the UK, according to the paper. Vodafone is understood to have dropped out of the race relatively early as Apple pursued a “divide and conquer” strategy and decided against having just one operator stock the phone across the three initial markets of France, Germany and the UK. Later in the week, T-Mobile is expected to announce an iPhone deal for Germany and Orange for France. Separately, The Register reports that O2 has started deploying EDGE technology on its network, which should facilitate over-the-air downloads on the iPhone, which does not yet have 3G access.

   

Phone House Germany exits service provider market (Germany)

  • September 4th, 2007
  • 3:40 pm

Carphone Warehouse’s German subsidiary The Phone House has announced plans to abandon the mobile service provider market. In future, it will only offer mobile products on a resale basis. It has signed a resale agreement with T-Mobile Germany, effective from 01 January 2008, and hopes to sign similar agreements with the other German mobile network operators in the coming months. The agreement with T-Mobile was announced by both companies at IFA 2007. The Phone House aims to withdraw from the mobile service provider market in Germany by end-April 2010 at the latest. It attributed its decision to the low margins for mobile service providers. The agreement with T-Mobile will allow The Phone House to market the operator’s consumer and business tariffs. The Phone House’s new business model focuses on its core competencies of sales, marketing and customer service.