February 5, 2008
The iPhone as hand-me-down
One man clearly immune to Steve Jobs’ famed "reality distortion field" is Ad Scheepbouwer, straight-talking CEO of KPN, the Dutch telecoms company. He decided that his iPhone was "pretty useless" so he gave it to his 20-year-old daughter. She didn’t rate it either. "She’s given it to her boyfriend," Mr Scheepbouwer told the FT. "He’s very happy with it, but it’s been three days so we’ll see how it ends."
Given that the iPhone isn’t yet officially available in the Netherlands (or any other country besides the US, UK, France and Germany) that’s surprisingly candid. KPN would like to sell the phone on the Dutch market and Apple has so far chosen to sell the iPhone tied to just one mobile operator in each country. But it probably also reflects what some pundits have said all along: Europeans generally expect to pay less and get more from their phones. There is some evidence for that with the news last month that the iPhone missed its sales target in the UK, where 02 has responded with better value calling plans.
Bring on the iPhone 2.0?
RE: Comments by Ad Scheepbouwer, CEO of KPN: “I had one and I thought it was a pretty useless phone, to be quite honest,” and “‘We’d be more than happy to sell it,’
If Mr. Scheepbouwer believes the iPhone to be useless, why would he be happy to sell it to his customers? Either he knows it is a great phone and does not have the guts to state that, or he is not above selling “useless” products to his customers.
Mr. Steen, could you please interview Mr. Scheepbouwer again and get a truthful answer from this confused man.
Posted by: Oh Blah Dee Blah Dah | February 6th, 2008 at 5:13 pm | Report this commentOn that point, he drew a distinction between his own opinion of the phone and the likelihood that lots of people will like it.
Posted by: Michael Steen | February 6th, 2008 at 6:05 pm | Report this commentSeems to me, this statement is a prime example that integrity is not a required and/or desired quality of today’s corporate management.
Oh well, by now one would get quite used to ‘useless’ products, and/or CEOs, for that matter.
Posted by: Alexey Rybak | February 6th, 2008 at 11:16 pm | Report this comment