I must say I am getting slightly irritated by O2, and their complete and utter lack of a product roadmap. As many of you know I've been after the HTC Touch Pro since before it was announced.
Catherine has had the HTC Touch Diamond for nearly two weeks (from Orange). Which when I was in Newport this week obviously checked out quite extensively. The short review: Much better than I had expected.
The Touch Pro, is essentially the Diamond, with a hardware keyboard, microSD slot and bigger battery, which should be released September time. My concern comes about from the complete and lack of information coming from O2 on the Diamond. They announced a new phone in their XDA lineup yesterday, called the Mantle (HTC P6500). But nothing on the Diamond, zippo, zilch.
What do I think is going on? They don't want to release the Touch Diamond because they've got contracts with Apple stating they have to shift X-number of iPhones, they don't want the Touch Diamond eating into potential iPhones being shifted, considering how low the iPhone's sales have been (despite the hype) they don't want to take any chances.
Newsflash O2: Apple will stab you in the back, like they've done to every partner in the entire history of the company.
Hopefully we won't get a repeat when the HTC Touch Pro is around the corner, it is less of a direct competitor. But if O2 don't make any announcements within a couple of weeks after another carrier releases it, it will be increasingly difficult for me to stay with O2. I'd be going crazy if I was a business customer trying to plan our upgrade cycle.
Maybe I'm too used the computer industry, where everybody (but Apple and a handful of other small companies who are too interested in screwing people over) has a roadmap. Windows "7"? Q1 2010. Office 2007 SP2? 1H 2009. It's nice knowing when something new is coming out years in advance, it lets you plan things. And before somebody says mobile phones develop faster (read: tested less). Sure, but roadmaps spanning 6 months ahead is easily feasible, it still takes over a year to develop a phone and carriers can make up their minds if they're going to be carrying something or not in that time.
Roadmap please O2.