Comments on: O2 Shifts 13,000 iPhones Per Second During Pre-Order Rush

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:41:30 +0000

Has a volume of 13,000 orders per second ever been previously documented on the web? I’ve certainly not heard of it.

I could just about believe 13,000 “hits” on their ordering system over a very short period, but “per second” sounds like fantasy. I imagine half the hits per second were due to the dubious way the page navigation was constructed; their initial fancy ordering system took about 10 clicks to get to the ‘checkout’ link. After a couple of hours of pain it was replaced with a rather more amateur-looking single-page affair.

Smells of pure PR cover-up to me.

Lee.

By: SwC

SwC — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:18:56 +0000

Given that O2 know how many iPhone customers they have, and they know how many SMS they sent out to those who expressed an interest, I fail to understand how they could not have predicted volumes.

My failure to order an upgrade, due to O2’s incompetence, I have had a chance to think about whether I need one, and whether I need to pass my old one on to my wife and sign her up for an 18 month contract (at £35/month) as well. I will now stick with what I have and just update the firmware. O2 lose a new customer (my wife), Apple lose a hardware sale and I save me £500 . Suits me.

By: iPhone 3g and O2 order problems | Piperben.com

iPhone 3g and O2 order problems | Piperben.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:08:13 +0000

[...] (full story here on worldofapple) [...]

By: Alex Brooks

Alex Brooks — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:26:26 +0000

I really do find 13,000 orders per second hard to believe.

By: spk

spk — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:39:27 +0000

As I typed I got an email from O2:

“Please understand demand for iPhone 3G is staggering. We invested heavily in our website capacity 250 times its normal rate, which was tested carefully in advance but we were experiencing 13,000 orders per second being placed, far beyond our expectations.”

Indeed it was!

By: spk

spk — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:36:59 +0000

“Unfortunately, they have only been able to supply a small proportion of the number of phones we asked for, because they are launching simultaneously in 22 countries.”

Pure bullshit. The problem on Monday was the ineptly designed webstore on the O2 website. It was *pathetic*! Dozens of attempts across seven or so hours and nothing but timing out.