Lost in Tech

A quick update to the previous post – Looks like someone managed to get their orders past the O2 flakey website. Despite being utterly crushed by demand UK iPhone upgraders are now being met by the following image.

Showing that the O2 has sold out of its pre-allocated upgrade stock in under 7 hours! This phone’s a hit before it’s even out yet. What on earth has caused O2 to get demand so wrong? Heads are going to roll.

The O2 upgrade store fell over today shortly before 8AM after it sent out text messages to all existing O2 iPhone owners informing them of the special pre-order page. Supposedly pre-orders for the iPhone 3G were available from 8AM although almost 2 hours with unresponsive pages and failed orders they took the site down for maintenance again. The backup ordering system that was supposed to cope with thedemand also failed miserably.

O2′s web capability  is normally something of a joke, but this was something they could have prepared for properly. They know exactly how many contracted iPhone users they have and could easily have done the sums for server capacity. This is just the demand from the existing iPhone owners, so it looks like a very good year for Apple.  I’ll update this post when it’s back up properly.

Edit: – Still down 2 hours 38 mins so far..

Edit:- site is backup but incredibly flakey – after over 4 hours!

The US has been pushed into 3rd place in video-game territory revenue according to the latest stats from Nielsen

Gamesindustry.biz compared the stats to the US and Asia market share – “Gaming generated EUR 7.3 billion (USD 11.4 billion) in the European Union during 2007, compared with EUR 7.4 billion (USD 11.5 billion) in Asia and EUR 6.9 billion (USD 10.7 billion) in the United States.”

The average age of a gamer in the UK is 33 – the highest out of the territories surveyed – and 42 per cent of UK game players have children.”

Some interesting stats from the report:-

In the UK, 37 % of the population aged between 16 and 49 describe themselves as active gamers defined as currently playing games on a console, handheld device or PC. The same is true for 28% of the population in Spain and Finland.

- 72% of European gamers use their games console as a multimedia device for broader media activities such as accessing the Internet, playing DVDs or listening to MP3’s.
- Video-games are not restricted to the ‘younger crowd’; 33% of those aged 30 to 49 in the UK classify themselves as active gamers, followed by 23% in Finland and 16% in Spain.
- Females represent a sizable proportion of the games market: 29% of women aged 16 to 49 in the UK, and 18% in Spain and Finland, describe themselves as active gamers.

This news is incredibly significant, meaning that console manufacturers, and developers will refocus more attention on Europe and Asia – these statistics may also give clues on the restricted supply of Wii into the US, as maybe stocks get diverted to key European and Asian markets first, especially seeing the strength of the US economy is so weak. Is this just another notch on the gradual decline of the US gaming market or a testament to the strength of Europe and Asia?

The original report is available from here.