iPhones abroad: No lines, brisk sales in South Africa
There were no queues of eager iPhone customers outside Cape Town’s Vodacom stores when doors opened at 8 a.m. Friday morning, but sales were reported to be brisk — despite steep prices and an administrative snafu.
“I don’t know how many people have come through our doors,” a salesperson told a correspondent for ITWeb. “But it has been really busy.” (link)
The iPhones are being sold unlocked because local law forbids carriers from binding cell phones to any particular network. Prices started at 6,389 Rand ($788) for an 8 GB model and 7,569 Rand ($934) for 16 GB. There was some confusion at first about the upgrade process for existing customers, but it was soon straightened out.
South Africa is the first of the third wave of countries to get the new phone this year — a wave that is crashing somewhat haphazardly compared with the first two.
Apple (AAPL) launched the iPhone 3G nearly simultaneously in 22 countries on July 11 and in another 22 countries on August 22. But the 29 countries that were on Apple’s official “Coming Soon” list on Monday seem be getting their phones in piecemeal fashion and with little fanfare. (see here)
The iPhone went on sale in Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Turkey and Brazil on Friday. It’s coming to Russia a week later, on Oct. 3.
There is no known schedule for the phone’s arrival in the remaining 24 countries. For more information, go to Apple’s site here and click on the button corresponding to the country you are interested in.
There were and are no lines for the iPhone in South Africa because virtually no effort has been put into marketing the device. 9 out of 10 people here have never even heard the name ‘iPhone’ before. Given the potential cash cow that the iPhone is & a strong consumer base with immense buying power, I can only conclude that the lack of advertising or hype was deliberate. For the most part, the fact that it was being released this weekend was only divulged after it had already officially been released. Perhaps Vodacom prefers to not be overwhelmed by biting off more than it can chew on opening weekend.
PS. Sent from my iPhone :)
Nice job making us look bad again FunkinGroovin from Texas.
“Get your self at least moderatly educated before you open your ignorant american mouth.”
How educated to you have to be to spell moderately?
:)
FunkinGroovin is from Texas… like our President. Enough said.
Please don’t stereotype all of America by his retardation.
Relax, Sweden. Enjoy some sarcasm.
Even with the middle class having money, that’s a lot of Rand for an iPhone. And I love mine.
You’re a moron… No less than ten years ago South Africa’s currency was stronger than the US Dollar.
South Africa has a considerable middle class = they have money. Get your self at least moderatly educated before you open your ignorant american mouth.
You mean to tell me that in South Africa, there is actually somebody there that can afford the phone and service? Are they going to have it surgically implanted so they don’t get it stolen or get mugged for it? Otherwise, I’m betting it’s only government officials that are snappin’ ‘em up, in what case, why sell them in a store? They should have just passed ‘em out in the African parliament. lol
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
@ FunkinGroovin
You are so ignorant it’s not funny. South Africa has +3 million people who earn more than R300, 000.00 a year (+/- US$36,000.00 a year). Vodacom did not hype up the launch because they only had 30,000 units for sale. For goodness sake only select stores are selling the iPhone because of supply constraints. MTN – Vodacom’s competition – has been pushing Omnia for weeks now to counter the iPhone. Re – affordability – for my stupid Samsung phone I pay well over R900.00 (+/- US$100.00) a month. We have all the high end smartphones because we can afford them from iPhones look – alikes from LG, Samsung, HTC to RIM’s Blackberry offerings and Nokias high end phones and yes now we have the iPhone and I am getting ones as soon as my contract is up with Cell C.