If you'd care to recall, Apple signed a deal with mobile phone company O2 to distribute the iPhone in the UK. From all indications, the initial consumer reaction towards the mobile phone was pretty good.

O2's CEO, Matthew Keys, said that he expects to sell 200,000 iPhones by January next year. An estimate which some analysts have called conservative.

Keys also mentioned an interesting fact about the mobile phone's popularity: 60 percent of UK iPhone customers are new subscribers to his company. This indicates that the people interested in the iPhone were not limited to O2's old established consumer base and it opens up the potential for further growth.

Because of these facts, Keys is confident that O2 will be landing an exclusive deal for Apple's second generation 3G iPhone. If they do enter into an exclusive contract with Apple for the new phones, they might be one step closer to the company's goal of hitting one million customers by 2010.