German iPhone sales disappointing

There seem to be concerns amongst the analyst community that the Apple brand isn’t strong enough outside of North America to compete with the big names in the handset space.

On Tuesday, Deutsche Telekom’s domestic mobile unit, T-Mobile, announced that it has sold 70,000 iPhones on contract, since the device launched at the start of November.

Avian Securities notes that the German figures have come in weaker than both France and the UK – France Telecom hit the 70,000 mark on January 10, while O2 in the UK has shifted 200,000.

The analysts believe the disappointing figures highlight the level of competition in the European handset space, with an abundance of 5 megapixel cameraphones and touch screens flooding the market.

The iPhone did help buoy T-Mobile’s net adds during the fourth quarter however, with 385,000 new subscriptions in the final period of 2007 alone.

T-Mobile Germany reported almost 36 million customers as of year end, with almost 1 million opting for fixed-term contracts in 2007. Eastern Europe and the US were also strong drivers of growth, with the number of mobile customers worldwide rising to a total of 119.6 million including some 2.2 million customers from Orange Netherlands at the end of year.

The operator’s data-based tariffs are also going great guns. By the end of 2007, 3.2 million T-Mobile customers in Europe were already using mobile internet via web’n’walk.

But the bleed is continuing in the fixed line space. A total of around 2.1 million lines were lost in Germany in 2007, 537,000 of which were in the fourth quarter – the same level as last year. However, the number of retail DSL broadband customers rose by 526,000 in the same period. More than 9 million customers in Germany now have a broadband line direct from T-Home and around 3.5 million resale lines were marketed, taking the total number of lines to 12.5 million.