O2 Bigwig playing down the iPhone?

Instead of basking in the glory of the fictional iPhone sales figures published by the tabloids, Chief Executive of O2, Peter Erskine, has denied the sales have been anything like what has been reported. Silly man.

O2’s CEO stressed that it was still "early days" for the iPhone and that the sales were more in the region of “tens of thousands” rather than the alleged 100,000.

The fact that the company hired 1,400 new staff to help deal with the iPhone rush is just one more reason why Mr. Erskine should be keeping schtum about the sales figures. We’d hate to be proved right when we said all those newly acquired staff members would be sitting around doing nothing. Although we can’t really blame him for trying to lower our expectations. What with Carphone Warehouse saying they’d shift at least 10,000 of the iBricks, erm phones on the first day, it wasn’t surprising to read they’ve reportedly only sold 11,000 over the three days.

However this could be due to the fact that their chip and pin machines chose 6pm Friday to reject punters details left right and centre. Apparently, they don’t like being switched off at 6pm only to be switched back on at 6.02pm. . .And apparently it was all fixed by Saturday but, as we all know, first impressions are everything.

Despite all this, Erskine is remaining upbeat, claiming that things in sales are the same as they always were.

“It’s the old story in retail, if you can get them in you can sell them something.”

Unless it’s an iPhone. . .Because then, even if they wanted to buy one, the credit card machine wouldn’t let them.