The UK arm of Orange, the France Telecom-owned operator that is merging with T-Mobile’s UK bit, today offered a lot of news on the mobile games side. They made an announcement on the introduction of not less than 3 different gaming services that they will be launching over the next couple of weeks:
- Playtomo is a social gaming service to be used within the users’ social networks (e.g. Facebook; no others were mentioned). Users can download the app (?) from Orange’s portal and then share scores etc on the social network of choice. It sounds a little like a “posh Facebook Connect” solution (and this is not meant derogatory at all!). Friends can be invited from any UK network operator.
- Games Zone is a subscription-service where “just” £5 per month buy you two games and a 20% discount on all others. It also offers “exclusive competitions”.
- The third offering is a little unclear to me: Orange will launch the aptly called “Orange iPhone Games” offering, which will feature games that are “designed specifically or published by Orange for iPhone customers”. They say it will include a variety of game genres as well as the aforementioned Playtomo. Now, this one, I am not sure about… Orange clearly looks to bolstering their brand (or, perhaps, use their brand as a lever to lift otherwise unbranded games into the limelight) but this seems like a tough proposition. It is an interesting one, too, though as it would seem the first time an operator steps into the ring as a publisher amongst many. Watch this space…
The really uplifting thing about this is that Orange clearly recognises the significance of games to their overall offering and playful interaction is – as I have often pointed out – likely to be a driver for interaction between people in the mid- and long-term.
Finally: do you think this gives any hint as to which brand will survive the merger of the Orange and T-Mobile UK operations? 
It is conference season and one of the more exciting ones kicks off in Berlin this week: Mobile 2.0 opens its gates on Tuesday and boasts an exceptional line-up to look at the future of mobile.
The very, very high-profile set-up of speakers includes:
- Olivier Laury, Content Director, Bouygues Telecom
- Jonathan MacDonald, Managing Director, JMA
- Damien Byrne, Head of Entertainment, T-Mobile
- Mark Curtis, CEO, Flirtomatic
- Amer Hasan, Sr Manager Apps & Developer Programms, Vodafone Group
- Alistair Hill, Analyst, Comscore
- Antoine Vince Stabyl, CEO, ItsMy.com
- Romi Parmar, CEO, The 3G Dating Agency
- Olaf Kroll, Director Business Development Europe, MySpace
- Chris Wade, CEO, Shozu
- Antony Beswick, Global Strategic Product Manager Social Networking, Ericsson
- Stefanie Hoffmann, Founder Aka-Aki
- Jonathan Medved, CEO, Vringo
- Mo Firouzabadian, Global Business Line Director – Carrier Solutions, Buongiorno
- Ilja Laurs, CEO GetJar
and many, many more, including, yes, yours truly (I’ll be on two panels, namely on the succinctly titled panel on “redefining the mobile content marketplace: exploring the growth, development and industry implications of mobile app stores” and on “building strategies around the drivers of innovation in mobile web 2.0″).
You can register here, and, believe me, it’ll be worth it. It is an exciting topic with top speakers in an exciting city. Make your way over and join us!
See you all in Berlin! Ping me on Twitter (@vhirsch) if you want to get in touch.
As Android continues to roll out (at least 18 devices by year-end), the ecosystem around it starts to sprout, too. To highlight this, an Android-centered business and development-oriented conference, Droidcon, will hit Berlin on 4 November, and I will be giving a keynote on licensing models and open source (full programme here).
It looks like a very exciting event, so I’d like to encourage everyone to come (there are 4 parallel tracks, so you do not have to listen to my ranting…)! Register here (and, no, I do not earn a commission).
I’ll post a little preview on what I will be talking about more specifically ahead of the event, so stay tuned.
After the news broke that Orange will add the iPhone to its roster from just before Christmas, today we read that Vodafone UK will do the same, only a little later, some time in Q1/2010. Vodafone said that not having the iPhone was basically the reason for losing 200k customers in the last quarter alone. Vodafone had previously been shipping the device in 12 other territories.
With Orange and T-Mobile merging their UK operations, the new set-up which sees basically all large operators offering the device should make for some juicy deals. Analysts reckoned the contract tariff for to come down by £4-5 per month. Orange did not say anything specific but “indicated” that it would be cheaper than O2′s deals.
According to the article, Virgin Mobile (an MVNO that sails on the Vodafone network) is also “understood” to be desperate to secure the right to sell the phone. Happy days…
There have been rumours galore about Apple’s exclusive deals for its iPhone all over the place (see e.g. here for Verizon). New reports have now surfaced that appear to confirm that Apple is looking at this option for both the US and the UK (and, if this works, presumably also for other territories):
In the UK, T-Mobile confirmed it was in talks with Apple over stocking the iPhone 3G (the 3GS remaining exclusive to O2, which also has its hands on the Palm Pre) and Orange is “believed”, to be as well.
In the US, the Verizon discussion has been around for a while. A new report now suggests that losing the exclusivity would spell doom for AT&T: the report estimates that as much as 30% of AT&T’s customer are with the carrier solely because of the iPhone exclusivity. This sounds a little high to me: after all, the iPhone penetration in the US is much lower than that (it held just under 11% market share globally in Q1/2009). Are they saying that all the other users (those with the less fancy handsets) just stay on AT&T to share into the iPhone limelight? No, I thought not…
Apple is in any event in a beautiful position at the moment: so far, most of its competitors’ “iPhone killers”(Palm Pre, Blackberry Storm and innumerable devices from Samsung, LG and Nokia) have failed to challenge its numbers and, quite literally, all of the app stores set up by competitors showed meagre results compared to the – now – 1.5 bn (!) downloads in a little over a year from the Apple App Store. The good folks from Cupertino are therefore now in a pretty good position: they proved (a couple of times now) that they shift 1m+ devices – on the opening weekend! They bring a lot of sex appeal in which the carriers, not generally known for coolness, can bask. They cracked the content dilemma and produced a thriving developer community, which made people actually use their phones for all these things that have been promised for so long (iPhones are connected, most others can connect). In short: in carriers eyes, they are – aside from the horrible fact that Apple takes a healthy cut – a really good thing for networks that see themselves locked into cut-throat pricing wars over voice and SMS (bringing in, anecdotally, up to 50% of European carrier profits over the past 5 years) and craving for a way to increase user ARPU (app revenue on the iPhone is, apparently, $27 per device). Happy days…
There have been press reports (in German) according to which Vodafone is pondering an acquisition of T-Mobile UK. The reporting paper, FAZ, is not only fairly conservative but also the most prestigious German newspaper, so there would appear to be some substance in this.
The paper reports that the board of Deutsche Telekom, the owner of T-Mobile, was facing increasingly critical sentiment on its UK investment: they are said to have sunk a painful £13bn into the UK arm since their acqusition in 1999. Investment bank Sal Oppenheim’s estimated sales price of €4.5bn would at least ease some of that pain.
The UK market is hotly contested and one where a lot of the lar
ge international conglomerates are represented, namely with Vodafone, Telefonica/O2, France Telecom/Orange and Hutchison Whampoa’s 3. The strong competition would also appear to ease concerns of merger control restrictions (Vodafone would become a clear market leader in the UK): they could argue quite reasonably that there was more than capable competition in the market besides their acquisition.
Vodafone CEO Colao is apparently interested in acquisitions. T-Mobile suggested though that it is very early stage. Stay tuned…
Nokia’s deal with Skype did not go down too favourably with German carriers T-Mobile and Vodafone, and there had been threats that they would drop the respective Nokia devices (including the long-awaited hero handset N97) from their device roadmaps. Today, T-Mobile provided some “clarification” on the issue: according to a spokesperson, T-Mobile apparently wants to ship the N97 but not with the Skype VoIP client installed (“it is up to us to decide what is on the device”).
The most excellent German blog Mobile Zeitgeist alerted me (in German) to a little battle that illustrates the pitfalls of creating the seamless user experience: Nokia appears to being in a tussle with (at least) the German arms of Vodafone and T-Mobile over the pre-installation of Skype clients on some of its forthcoming handset models (including the long-awaited iPhone competitor, N97).
After all the talk (and more talk) about Apple’s iPhone, a new report provides some new numbers reminding everyone that there are more phones on this earth than the sleek one from Cupertino. It is not about the iPhone (or not only) but about Blackberry, the iPhone, Blackberry and Blackberry. Yes, this is the first four places in the top-selling smartphones in the US in Q1/2009 according to market research specialists NPD Group (it is only the press release, so pretty lean on information).
- RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
- Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
- RIM BlackBerry Storm
- RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
- T-Mobile G1
I have mentioned this earlier: Next week, I will be headed to beautiful Prague in order to attend and contribute to the European Mobile Media Conference. If you can, make sure to head over (there is even some last-minute discount).
World market leader Nokia had a bruising 2008, at least in the smartphone field. According to a study, the Finns’ market share in this segment dropped by 10% to a – well – still fairly respectable 40.8% in Q4/2008 (as compared to 50.9% a for the quarter in the previous year). Painful!
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor
(Thousands of Units)
| Company | 4Q08 Sales | Market Share4Q08 (%) | 4Q07 Sales | Market Share4Q07 (%) | 4Q07-4Q08 Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia | 15,561.7 | 40.8% | 18,703.3 | 50.9% | -16.8% |
| RIM | 7,442.6 | 19.5% | 4,024.7 | 10.9% | 84.9% |
| Apple | 4,079.4 | 10.7% | 1,928.3 | 5.2% | 111.6% |
| HTC | 1,631.7 | 4.3% | 1,361.1 | 3.7% | 19.9% |
| Samsung | 1,598.2 | 4.2% | 671.5 | 1.8% | 138.0% |
| Others | 7,829.7 | 20.5% | 10,077.3 | 27.4% | -22.3% |
| Total | 38,143.3 | 100% | 36,766.1 | 100% | 3.7% |
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor, 2008
| Company | 2008 Sales | Market Share 2008 | 2007 Sales | Market Share 2007 | Growth 2007-2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nokia | 60,920.5 | 43.7% | 60,465.0 | 49.4% | 0.8% |
| RIM | 23,149.0 | 16.6% | 11,767.7 | 9.6% | 96.7% |
| Apple | 11,417.5 | 8.2% | 3,302.6 | 2.7% | 245.7% |
| HTC | 5,895.4 | 4.2% | 3,718.5 | 3.0% | 58.5% |
| Sharp | 5,234.2 | 3.8% | 6,885.3 | 5.6% | -24.0% |
| Others | 32,671.4 | 23.5% | 36,176.6 | 29.6% | -9.7% |
| Total | 139,287.9 | 100% | 122,315.6 | 100% | 13.9% |
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 4Q08
| Company | 4Q08 Sales | Market Share 4Q08 | 4Q07 Sales | Market Share 4Q07 | Growth 4Q07-4Q08 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbian | 17,949.1 | 47.1% | 22,902.5 | 62.3% | -21.6% |
| RIM | 7,442.6 | 19.5% | 4,024.7 | 10.9% | 84.9% |
| Windows Mobile | 4,713.9 | 12.4% | 4,374.4 | 11.9% | 7.8% |
| Mac OS X | 4,079.4 | 10.7% | 1,928.3 | 5.2% | 111.6% |
| Linux | 3,194.9 | 8.4% | 2,675.9 | 7.3% | 19.4% |
| Palm OS | 326.5 | 0.9% | 449.1 | 1.2% | -27.3% |
| Other OSs | 436.9 | 1.1% | 411.3 | 1.1% | 6.2% |
| Total | 38,143.3 | 100% | 36,766.1 | 100% | 3.7% |
Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 2008
| Company | 2008 Sales | Market Share 2008 | 2007 Sales | Market Share 2007 | Growth 2007-2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbian | 72,933.5 | 52.4% | 77,684.0 | 63.5% | -6.1% |
| RIM | 23,149.0 | 16.6% | 11,767.7 | 9.6% | 96.7% |
| Windows Mobile | 16,498.1 | 11.8% | 14,698.0 | 12.0% | 12.2% |
| Mac OS X | 11,417.5 | 8.2% | 3,302.6 | 2.7% | 245.7% |
| Linux | 11,262.9 | 8.1% | 11,756.7 | 9.6% | -4.2% |
| Palm OS | 2,507.2 | 1.8% | 1,762.7 | 1.4% | 42.2% |
| Other OSs | 1,519.7 | 1.1% | 1,344.0 | 1.1% | 13.1% |
| Total | 139,287.9 | 100% | 122,315.6 | 100% | 13.9% |
Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
I previously looked at recession-busting sectors and products, and here’s more proof that not all is bad: two reports point out that smartphones continue to outperform the market rather significantly, recording growth figures of 25.9% year-on-year in Europe; the growth for all of 2007 vs 2008 was even more impressive: they grew by 36.1%. In the US, smartphones increased their share of the overall mobile phone market from 12% in Q4/2007 to 25% a year later. Good numbers!
There’s new data out on the bestselling handsets, and this time it is not being derived from accessory sales (which may have its flaws as I pointed out here) but from a survey amongst service reps and store managers across the 4 big US mobile networks (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile; these comprise 85% of the total subscriber base). Now, this would arguably reduce the recorded sales for the iPhone since this is also being sold via Apple’s own retail stores as well as Walmart, Best Buy, etc. So again not an entirely accurate yardstick, huh?
Funny little press reports today tell us that T-Mobile “ditched” Nokia handsets that are capable of supporting the Finnish giant’s Ovi (Finnish for door) multimedia portal. The German originator of these news is slightly more cautious: they also report that T-Mobile denied this and merely point out that T-Mobile has less Nokia phones on offer than a week ago and has – quite noteworthy indeed – removed all those that were “Ovi-enabled”.
The background is of course Nokia’s move into the multimedia service area (on which I first wrote about here). Nokia scored some early successes, namely with Telefonica (see here) and Vodafone (see here) but the threat to operator-driven content offerings was clear from the start. Whilst Telefonica and Vodafone were quite content on having the Ovi portal to music, video and games offered from Nokia’s platform, on their desktop alongside their own offering, T-Mobile allegedly sees this as a threat to its own plans. It is, hence, yet another iteration of the fight of carriers for their ground in the media sector.
T-Mobile might feel strong in the media space due to its iPhone monopoly in Germany but even if (and I suspect that that is not the case), it would be a somewhat desperate attempt: if such drastic moves as locking out the market leader’s handsets are required to keep customers on its own content offerings, is it then not a clear sign that such offerings might not actually be cutting it? In particular when the competitor is an OEM that in itself does not really enjoy a particular flair of creativity and buoyancy in media terms…
I would suggest that Nokia is (only?) a noteworthy competitor because of its market share in the OEM market, and not because it is such a good media company. Constraints with a view to placement on the phone’s “desktop” as well as walled gardens and consumer fear for super-high data charges (see an absurd example here) drive people to what is there, not what is best. This is not even disrespectful to the fine folks at Nokia; it merely is to demonstrate that a lot of players are not even there yet, so that it is too early to say who is best. The desperate moves of the carriers as well as historical performance on the content side suggests, however, that carriers may not be the best suited ones. Given that content is only a fraction of their data revenues, this may not actually be a bad thing: could it not be pointing them to do what they’re really good at, i.e. operating a network. If you want to call it a pipe, fine, but just make it a very, very smart pipe, and everyone (most importantly your customers) will love you!
Now, this has been puzzling me for years: the US carrier policy (I am not sure how many still do it) of charging the recipient of a text message for that message. How odd is that? You sit in a restaurant, the waiter brings you a bottle of wine that you did not order. You do not drink the wine (because you did not order it and you do not like wine) but you are being charged nonetheless. There is even a bolder version of this: the same waiter works for a winery, and they send you that bottle as a marketing trick, say to lure you into booking travel to the Loire wine region. Yet again: you did not order it, you did not drink it, they charge you. No, you say, this is surely not possible. And I agree.
However, the US arm of T-Mobile (and I am sure others before them) is doing just that: if users that do not hold a special data plan (something like a don’t-pay-for-wine-you-did-not-order-plan) are being charged for every SMS they receive, be it your teenage son telling you that he didn’t make it [home/to school/to your appointment 3 hours ago], be it your partner announcing that he/she is on the tube and will be home in 10 minutes or be it the tourism authority of the Loire region working hard on improving travel to their area – you pay.
This now seems to backfire as there has been a class action filed against T-Mobile US seeking redress for exactly that. According to the report about it, “the plaintiffs allege T-Mobile USA’s texting policy violates federal telecom law and Washington state’s consumer protection-unfair business practices act” but, quite frankly, I would have thought it would also violate a string of other, more mundane laws about contracts and invalidity of coercive business practices, etc. Unfortunately for all of us who like to drool over those incredible sums in US law suits, “the suit did not contain a dollar figure for alleged damages.”
It is about time that this stops: it estranges your customers, it provides for horrendous customer experience, and, really they shouldn’t say they didn’t see it coming…
