O2 Reaches Two Million iPhone Milestone In 27 Months

Telefonica-owned O2 has said that it has managed to sell its two millionth iPhone phone ever since Apple's iconic phone was launched in the UK on the 9th of November 2007.

Exactly two years later, it lost its exclusivity with Orange, then Tesco Mobile and Vodafone managing to dent O2's lead. Vodafone did announce that it had sold more than 100,000 iPhone during the first week of sale.

Back in February 2009, O2 announced that it sold slightly more than one million iPhone over the previous 14 months, which roughly translates in sales of 70,000 per month.

Fast forward this year and it seems that O2 managed to sell even more phones, roughly 80,000 monthly, despite having more competitors. Ronan Dunne, chief executive of O2, told Reuters that the general public associates iPhone with O2 and that it will take a long time to "go away".

O2 says that the arrival of the Palm Pre also helped it reduce the number of customers leaving the network for its competitors and it believes that it will be the only mobile phone network in the UK to grow in the next quarter.

We suppose that the fact that it is giving away subsidised fixed line broadband packages is helping as well. Interestingly, O2 also reported earlier this year that its network was under intense pressure due to the amount of data consumed by the iPhone alone.