Introducing the It Phone

They don’t make it easy for you to get your hands on an iPhone 3G, do they? First there were the Friday queues, now the phone has pretty much sold out in the UK. And that’s only the black version, which, judging from last week’s crowds in front of the O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores, appeals exclusively to alpha males. Which makes us wonder, what kind of phone would get us women queuing? Handset manufacturers, the race for the It Phone is on. And here are some tips for getting it right.

Carphone and Best Buy: It Aint About Retail Really

From the day the news broke, the great weight of coverage about Best Buy buying into Carphone Warehouse has been about how Best Buy will attempt an assault on DSG and Comet. That may be the case (especially with weekend rumours about Best Buy hinting it may snap up Currys or Comet), but the actual story here is how the deal makes Carphone Warehouse even more of communications service provider.

In retail it shares the load with a bigger partner, but in broadband services its strategy is one of buying up the big ISP names one by one.

Evidence for this? Today's news about Carphone Warehouse's bid for Tiscali. So how's Dunstone going to spend the remaining £550m of the Best Buy investment of £1.1bn?