Mobile merry-go-round
Competition is getting increasingly feverish between mobile phone operators to stock the latest, feature-packed smartphone, and one result of this seems to be shorter shelf-lives for the handsets themselves.
Vodafone's website today listed the Nokia N900 in its ‘coming soon' section, and it looks like it's the first UK operator to get its hands on the high-end smartphone. At the same time, however, it has restricted availability of the popular HTC HD2 - a direct competitor of the N900 - to business customers only.
It came as a bit of a surprise to see such a cutting-edge device as the HD2 sidelined so soon after launch so we contacted Vodafone and got this statement:
We won't be re-stocking the HTC HD2 for general consumer sales once our current devices sell out. There's been a great deal of interest since we made the HTC HD2 available to buy in November and our initial supply quickly sold out. With subsequent deliveries of stock we've prioritised the fulfilment of back orders for the device.
However, we will be continuing to range the device for business customers and we feel the HD2 is a popular B2B device. While we recognise some consumer customers are disappointed by our decision not to re-stock for general sales we believe the portfolio available to them still offers great options.
This explanation seems a tad counter-intuitive to us. Even allowing for supply shortages, why would you permanently reduce the availability of a product that was in such great demand? Maybe there are other strategic reasons for the decision.
There's not much more to add about the N900. The Vodafone UK site just says it will be available in January, but reveals no details about prices
