I’ve just got my iphone 3G thanks to a brief 10 minute sale window on the O2 website on tuesday 5th August and I’m lovin it. Its the first Apple product I’ve bought for myself after resisting their style over substance products for years!

I think the 45 euros a month price is very reasonable (about the same as my average vodafone bill but with more mins, data and texts) and I’m wondering if anyone knows why or how the unit dropped so dramatically in price since the original iphone!?

Heres my 3G iphone review for anyone interested – http://www.reverbstudios.ie/blog/iphone-3g-review/

I know there are some people who are ‘raving fans’ as Ken Blanchard describes them of Apple.

I love my iPod and would love an iPhone but not at the rates that O2 are offering them.

I am wondering what the revenue split is between O2 and Apple?

If Apple were to be consistent in expressing it’s brand across the world and with it’s reputation as a product so many people what to access, I am wondering why they don’t manage their relationships with their business partners in such a way that it’s reputation is not blotted with consumers?

I know that when I was in a company who were global brand owners and worked through JV’s that that would have been one of the things we would have reviewed as a KPI.

Or may be they do and we just don’t see/hear/experience it?

Being a long time Apple fan – I’ve pretty much only used their products since the late Eighties – I was appalled at both the price of the iPhone and the tariffs being charged by O2. Much as I’d bought into the meme and seriously wanted one of these, I was absolutely not going to shell out my hand earned cash.

There are a few points arising:

Why are we charged what appears to be a premium here in Ireland for Apple products (even taking into consideration differences in VAT and Sales Tax etc)?

Why was the supply so poor?

Why on earth did Apple simultaneously launch a bunch of other products and services?

One of these services, MobileMe, was supposed to be a competitor to Exchange, but pardon my language, it just fell on its arse. Jobs has subsequently been firefighting and I’m sure heads have rolled. The new service caused some users to lose all of their migrated email – years worth of data was lost in some cases.

I suppose that I was part of that Apple tribe in years gone by, not an extreme advocate but a semi-fanboi nevertheless. Maybe it’s age catching up on me but I’m not as ardent as I used to be and this shambles hasn’t done too much.

Maybe when the prices drop further and I’m not haemorrhaging cash quite so badly …

I am guessing retailers and Apple alike will have alot to reflect on next week as they review the launch.

I wonder if they feel it’s met their KPI’s?

Here in Australia, the Herald Sun (major newspaper) reported that hundreds of hopeful buyers were turned away from stores despite waiting in a queue for hours.

In fact one poor lad was fourth in line and had camped outside an Optus store since 2am only to be sent away empty handed, being told he had to pre-register and pay a deposit.

Unfortunately there are many similar stories of disappointed consumers due to the lack of stock.

I think I’ll stick with my trusted Blackberry for now.

Yes it’s amazing – in a climate where many people are keeping their wallets sewn into their pockets I wonder what missed opportunities there have been.

Though reading around the blogosphere of people in my network then things have not been great in Amsterdam or in parts of the UK

Steve Jobs is no doubt lying in a hammock happy for all the publicity – good or bad – as the issues are down to mobile providers and retailers it seems at the moment.

Have fun with your phone! And do keep Qiking please.

And for anyone wanting to see the launch of the 3G iPhone across the globe, twit.tv is doing 24 hours of programming – find out more at http://leoville.com/2008/07/10/1588/ and you can follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/twitlive