After more than a month of listening to their U.S brethren blab about how great the Droid is, folks in the UK finally got the chance to nab its European-doppelganger, the Milestone. Well, for about 3 hours anyway.
eXpansys, reigning handset online retailer kings of the UK, managed to lock in an exclusive distribution deal on the launch of the Milestone. They opened up sales yesterday morning – and within 2.5 hours, their stock was depleted.
In a comment from eXpansys sent to Pocket-lint:
“The demand for the Motorola Milestone has been staggering. We received the units at 10am on Thursday, 2.5 hours later we had sold out. A second shipment is already on the way and should be arriving in time for Christmas orders”.
While that’s certainly impressive, it’s not at all clear just how many phones were sold. They had a pre-order supply of about 1,000 handsets, which they later doubled to meet demand. Retailers will often match or double their pre-order sales for on-site inventory – so even if we’re lenient with the numbers, we very well could be talking about a total inventory of 5 to 6 thousand handsets. If thats the case, selling out in 3 hours doesn’t seem all that incredible – especially considering that eXpansys was the only retailer that could sell the handset in the UK at launch. If anything, it’s just bad planning on Moto’s part.
Either way, it appears the handsets are back in stock, if only temporarily. Get’em while they’re hot, UK-folk.
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