Vodafone ‘outsells Orange’ on first day of iPhone trading

Vodafone achieved sales of more than 50,000 iPhone’s on its first day of selling Apple’s revolutionary mobile handset.

The figure comfortably beats the 30,000 shifted by Orange on its first day as an official stockist last year, while also outperforming Google’s Nexus One which is believed to have tempted around 20,000 purchasers in its opening week.

Nexus One, it was announced last week, will be sold across Europe later this year, where its sim-free ability could prove a hit.

Last Thursday (January 14th) Vodafone became the fourth mobile retailer to sell the iPhone, following in the footsteps of O2, Tesco and Orange.

Such demand has caused confusion amongst some analysts, with Richard Wray of the Guardian pointing out that "the company’s pricing is scarcely different from the tariffs offered by O2 and Orange".

Vodafone has offered some incentives to customers who choose it as an iPhone supplier, however, with one example being its allowance of one gigabyte of 3G data.

It was suggested by the Telegraph last week that the biggest obstacle to overcome in 2010 would be providing a reliable and fast connection in as much of the UK as possible – something it believes Vodafone may struggle with as its signal covers just 81 per cent of the country.

"The reliability of mobile data networks will be a major issue this year, not least because Google has now unleashed the Nexus One, the first significant challenger to the iPhone in terms of power and functionality", said the newspaper.