At Carphone Warehouse, the Nokia 5310 has been overshadowed by the iPhone, with giant versions taking over its windows and demo handsets on tables inside. Carphone has found a little room on sandwich boards to promote two other products. One is the Sony Ericsson T250i available on prepay on O2, which is reduced from £39.95 to £29.95. The other is an invitation to ‘check out our dongles’. The retailer promotes them as ‘amazing little modems that give you fast mobile broadband the instant you plug them into the USB port of your laptop’.
It’s a similar story at
O2 where the iPhone dominates. The Samsung J600 pink is also on offer for £59.99 with £10 of top-up. O2 also has some ‘great festive offers’, including Sony Ericsson’s K800i for £99.99 and Nokia’s 5300 for £69.99, both with £10 top-up vouchers.
3 is promoting its mobile broadband dongle, along with contract deals for the Skypephone, which is free on Mix&Match tariffs such as an 18-month £18 contract that offers 500 minutes or texts and up to 4,000 minutes of free Skype calls.
Orange continues to promote its exclusive pink version of the Sony Ericsson W580i on prepay for £99.99 and business deals feature prominently, including unlimited off-peak landline calls for two years on selected Orange Venture business plans. Meanwhile, the red W910i, which is exclusive to Orange, is also being promoted. It is free on monthly plans upwards of £35.
The Havana Gold range and ‘unlimited music’ via MusicStation are on show at Vodafone. Festive deals for prepay handsets are also being promoted on sandwich boards outside stores, including Sony Ericsson’s K800i for £90 with £10 of top-up and the Motorola KRZR for £80.
Phone 4u’s iPhone spoiler, the LG KU990 Viewty, is free on plans upwards of £35. Staff say customers who wander into their stores in search of the iPhone are easily converted to the LG handset once they have compared the two. And Phones 4u is still promoting Sony Ericsson’s W580i on prepay for £99.95 on Orange, and the LG KG800 Chocolate in silver with T-Mobile for £49.95, both with £10 of top-up.
‘Who are your favourite five?’ asks T-Mobile’s website. Its MyFaves offer of free calls and texts to five numbers is also on display in stores. And two Nokias – the N73 for £99.99 with £20 of top-up and the 6300 for £79.99 with £10 of top-up – are still featured in the store’s windows. Online, the Nokia 6500 Classic is free with an 18-month Flext 20 contract with 140 minutes or 340 texts, reduced from £20 to £15.
