iPhone & Orange France

Thomas Husson | November 27, 2007, 02:14 AM

The iPhone will be available in a few Orange shops from Wednesday evening onwards, including a brand new Orange shop on the Champs-Elysees.

Now that I have been using* one for the last 2 weeks, I can simply confirm it is one thing to read the US press and to simply try this astonishing device (see my UK colleagues's Ian Fogg take).

The "out-of-the-box" experience is the best I have ever had with a mobile phone. It is simply amazing how simple it is and how well it works. It seems to be the approach of the TV spot . The focus is not on the "cool" factor (as often with iPods) but on a demontration of the UI to give tangible evidende of its simple UI.

We all know this is not the most performing device available (no GPS, no 3G, no video embedded, no camera options) and not the cheapest one to say the least, but no doubt you can recommend it to anyone who is ready to pay a premium to have the latest, coolest mobile phone. Apple aficionados are also often ready to pay a premium for the Apple brand and if I remember correctly the Razr was not the best phone ever but it sold pretty well...

A few additional comments:

- the touchscreen UI is great but you really need to get used to the lack of a keypad to send SMS. Text usage patterns will be KEY to track
- the Wifi functionality works well and data transfer is quicker than with EDGE. At least, it worked well with my Freebox and in a few hotspots.
- Orange's Wifi and particularly EDGE coverage is much better than that of O2 in the UK (this focus on EDGE can only please Bouygues Telecom...) but still far from HSPA
- visual voice mail to be available but not immediately at launch
- it remains a PC-centric experience where you have to manage your contacts and library from computer/laptop (no way to delete a pic from your photo libray direclty from the device)
- I could not try the Orange.iphone optimized mobile site (not available before Thursday) and there is no possibility to define a default home page. I was surprised by the number of publishers and advertisers that already have an iPhone version ready**. However, it is very difficult to find any mobile content for the Iphone (the official SDK toolkit is not going to be available before February) and the opportunity to select a specific section of a music track as a ringtone is not yet available in Europe.

Anyway, the point is now to see how much traction the device will get for the Christmas season:

- Orange's aim is clearly to acquire the high-profile consumers that are ready to pay for the device and for high-end voice/data packages. It is also to drive traffic to its own shops to cross-sell other products. There have been some (on-purpose?) leaks in the press (see here) about the tariffs. I will not comment them until officially confirmed by Orange

- SFR is very agressive with its SFR Illimythics offer, which is not as great as I initially thought (see updated comment here) but which offers a wide range of devices and which is heavily promoted: lots of TV spots and outdoor advertising (endorsed by football star Thierry Henry by the way)...

- Bouygues is essentially betting on "Blackberry for the masses" with RIM devices from 9 euros onwards...Which fits well with the group positionning and will keep retailers happy.

Exciting season in perspective. However, trusted sales figures should not be expected before q1 2008 !

(*) The iPhone (v 1.1.2) was provided to me by Apple and Orange.

Updated

(**) French readers, see more here. I particularly like the "Liberation" news version.