Apple’s exclusive UK mobile phone partner O2 is running out of stock for customers who want to place advance orders for 3G iPhone. It is supposed to go on general sale from Friday. 3G iPhone was available for online booking on O2 website from 8.00 a.m. onwards. But due to heavy traffic the website crashed within the first hour and O2 ran out of stock in the afternoon.

Carphone Warehouse, the only independent retailer in the UK informed that it has stocks available for new O2 customers for pre-order. Upgrading of O2 handset to a new 3G iPhone will commence only after Friday.
O2’s rivals are considering the short supply as a ploy to add hype to the Friday launch. It is a fact that company used similar tactics when it staged a high-profile music act at London’s O2 arena.

O2 refuted the rival’s speculations by saying that half the quantity of phones it ordered was availed by the pre-order customers. It did not reveal the total number of handsets it plans to stock. As per O2’s claims it has more than 200,000 registrations for 3G iPhone. It had 35,000 registrations for the existing version before it went on sale. According to Carphone Warehouse, interest in 3G iPhone is 10 times more than it was for the last version launched in November 2007.