Is Apple making overall headway with the iPhone 3G?
As Apple rolled out the iPhone 3G to 21 more counties last week, T-Mobile pointed to sales of 120,000 of the phones already in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, despite distribution and connectivity problems.
T-Mobile experienced delivery delays in all three countries, but customers complained about connectivity only in the Netherlands, according to Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telecom.
"Our sales expectations were surpassed," said Akham, in an interview published today the the German news magazine Focus.
However, some customers in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands had to wait weeks for delivery of the iPhones they'd ordered, he acknowledged, attributing the delays to Apple's launch of the iPhone in 21 others countries on Friday of last week.
Instituted in keeping with Apple's often repeated sales goal of 10 million iPhone 3Gs for 2008, last week's rollouts included Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecaudor, El Savador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, and Uruguay.
Also, Apple is now rumored to be talking with three Russian carriers about possible introduction of the iPhone in Russia during the month of October.
Meanwhile, in a posting on its Web site Friday, AT&T said that Apple's 16 GB iPhone 3G is available in most of its US stores today, and that AT&T will be restocking its stores with an 8 GB model later this week.
Also according to Akhavan, however, like users in many other countries, some Dutch users have complained about dropped calls and slowed access, with the phone reportedly reverting to lower speeds than 3G.
As previously reported in BetaNews, one user in the US has now filed a lawsuit charging Apple with false advertising in promising that the iPhone 3G performs "twice as fast for half the price."
Yet last week, too, Apple released a firmware upgrade aimed at improving connectivity performance. While many users have continued to complain, others could be benefiting from connectivity improvements.
In tests conducted at the labs of Swedish-based Bluetest, a vendor of wireless test equipment, researchers found little difference in signal transmission and reception between the iPhone, Sony Ericsson's P1 phone, and the Nokia N73.
"The P1 is a little better at receiving signal and the N73 a little better at sending signals. But the difference is small. The difference between the iPhone's and the P1's receive sensitivity is 2 dB," according to an article which appeared today in the Swedish newspaper Goteborgs-Posten (The Gothenburg Post).
The tests in Sweden also showed no differences between the three phones in their ability to maintain network connections, in the midst of noise from other wireless signals.
On the other hand, as previously reported in BetaNews, last week's iPhone rollouts received ho-hum responses in countries such as India and Poland, where availability and 3G connectivity issues seem to be overshadowed by affordability and a lack of widespread Internet access, which is necessary for activation.