It seems that opening large stores is all the rage at the moment. After Apple’s Sydney Store opening last week, Telstra yesterday threw the shackles off its new T[life]store on the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets in Melbourne.
Unlike Apple, there were no people camping out overnight; there’s no gigantic glass panels or Italian sandstone; instead there’s two levels of Telstra, crowned by a giant 22 x 2.5 metre LCD screen.
As with other T[life]stores, you can tell the obvious Apple Store influence, from the free daily training sessions and demonstrations, areas dedicated to getting your hands on the products and other areas dedicated to business users and home networking. Considering that this is their fifth T[life]store, they must be doing something right as well.
Telstra also used the launch to show off their new QR codes yesterday, and for everybody keeping notes, they refused to discuss the iPhone (although Uncle Sol did pull out the new HTC Touch Diamond for a bit). Uncle Sol did, however, go on to say that Telstra was bigger than Apple.
Jared
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 2:43 PMTelstra bigger than Apple!!! Hahaha, that made my afternoon. Soory but i don’t recall seeing Telstra in any Top Ten company polls and does Sol even look at the stock market. Don’t remember Telstra hitting $200 a share let along $10.
And he say’s he in touch with this countries needs. Telstra has never been in touch, they are the most over priced Telco, they don’t listen to anyone and are so slow in the uptake of new technolgy. Give me a brake.
S.
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 3:22 PMSo Sol’s is bigger than Steve’s?
I think the only response thats suitable is that Steve knows how to use his better :)
boc
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 4:03 PMDoes anyone actually care about anything that comes out of Telstra these days? With Sol at the wheel they’ve become a joke. A lame one at that.
I was always hoping that Apple would open a store at that location. It would have been awesome. To see it turn into a Telstra store… my heart weeps.
aniki_xiao
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 5:21 PMIf you guys read it carefully he actually meant bigger then Apple in Australia. Which i think it is valid to say. Every house in Australia has a uses some kind of Telstra service, be it home phone, internet or mobile. (note; naked DSL and phone line rental through other companies are still using Telstra’s product, they are still getting a cut from it). I don’t think you will find even Apple’s string of oh-so-desirables has the same percentage of penetration. I honest don’t see why Australian would bash Telstra over Apple. How many Australians owns Telstra shares and how many owns Apple? Sure, it has its faults, but right now do you see any other major technology related company in Australia that is still Australian? Furthermore they are spending big in R&D and actually developing new technologies. I don’t see Optus or Vodafone have any kind of major R&D presence in Australia. How are we going to be the smart country if we don’t have a strong high-tech R&D industry? We can’t ride the resource boom forever.
Jon
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 5:45 PMI think your missing the point, “in Australia”, telstra are fare bigger then apple in many ways…. In Australia. And I do care what comes out of telstra as they are the only network that bothers to provide mobile service in my area, as fare as the price of shares, well there are simply more telstra share then there are apple shares, telstra simply divided the value of the company into smaller parts.
Chundles
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:14 PMYeah but Apple was never a government monopoly that still owns the tax-payer funded infrastructure despite being privatised.
Sol’s a moron.
michael doh
Monday, June 30, 2008 at 4:38 PMtelstra iphone confirmed
http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/news/telstra-iphone-3g-is-coming