Tag: Vodafone Page 1 of 7

What is the Value of a Twitter User?

German newspaper F.A.Z. had a nice graph where they compare the “values” of users by putting user numbers in relation to market capitalization. The paper says “experts” estimate (ahead of the recently announced IPO) the value of Twitter to be up to $15bn (€11.3bn) which, with some 200m users, would equate to the value of a user to just under €57. They then go on and compare it to other companies and suggest that that value is really rather low. They provide comparative numbers:

  • Amazon: €809
  • Walmart: €752
  • Vodafone: €327
  • Google: €200
  • Facebook: €72
  • Procter & Gamble: €49

Now, this is of course a somewhat crude analysis (an Amazon or Vodafone user arguably must be a lot more valuable as those two companies derive value directly from transactions with and by those) but it is interesting nonetheless. If you want to see snazzy graphs and/or can read German, here’s the article.

giffgaff: Doing Good! More to Do?

All the way back near when it was founded, I wrote a post about giffgaff, an MVNO with a twist running on (and actually owned by) the UK operator O2 (which is of course now owned by Telefonica). The twist with giffgaff is that it termed itself as being “people-powered”. Nice buzzword, huh? When I wrote that post, it was pretty much on the basis of early news, PR and not much more. Now, though, I know better what it is because, you see, I just swapped the phone deals for my two children over to giffgaff (away from Vodafone where they were on a 30-day-rolling contract).

No Frills

So, here’s what it does (and, more significantly, doesn’t): giffgaff doesn’t have shops, it doesn’t have sales reps, call centres, etc. In other words: it doesn’t have much overhead. It does have a network (not its own, it piggy-backs on the mothership, i.e. O2), simple tarifs, very low prices and the quickest way I have ever ordered any phone product online.

Beating the Power Law of Distribution (?)

But how, do you ask, can they run a network with all its customer queries, moans and whining, small and big problems? And that is exactly where I originally voiced concerns: You see, they use fora instead. If you have a question, just post it to their forum and the users will answer. According to the power law of distribution, this is a tricky one as only very few users contribute a lot and most contribute nothing. However, by the looks of it, they answer a) more quickly and b) more competently than a poorly paid, poorly trained, probably somewhat frustrated (whatever happened to the glistening career) call centre worker. The MVNO has a programme for users encouraging to participate in the community. They will earn points (convertible in additional phone credits) for spreading the word (marketing) and helping out other users on the fora (customer service).

So (and here’s a theme for me): giffgaff effectively used some basic tools from the social and commercial toolbox to drive customer acquisition and customer service: incentivise people and, in doing so, make sure you align their commercial interests with your own.

And whilst there seem to have been growing pains, it seems to work more or less really rather well. And all this for £12 per month for a “bucket” of 250 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited (!) data. Can’t beat that!

Is There More?

This then got me thinking: what if they would expand on this bucket (and, perhaps, forum) ideas and start customizing them for the more “discerning” user. Something for SME for instance, travelers, professionals, etc. Higher bucket prices but better tailored for business needs. Premium buckets for, say, dedicated concierge services (the crux is that the customer service required for that is quantifiable and directly accountable). With the basics still covered (cf. supra under “No Frills”), it should still be possible to run the basic service at similar margins (and note that I assume that they have positive margins) but start building in the fatter bits of the market in return for the higher reliability, security and no hassle that business users require. The thing is, you see, they do not require tedious and generally hopeless customer service over phone lines you have trouble even finding or reaching (20 minute waiting time is not rare as we probably all know).

Such a service would probably not for everyone but. You would have to be comfortable to transact your business online (but more and more people – and, yes, probably 100% of readers of this blog – do so anyway), you would arguably have to have at least a basic understanding of some tech issues (again, cf. supra) but, hey, you would be targeting the growing part of the economy, i.e. the one that either is purely digital or successfully leverages (terrible word, I know) digital outlets for its business. Bingo!

There Are Blueprints Galore!

Come to think of it: it is exactly how so many of the online stalwarts disrupted traditional businesses. And it seems almost ironic that this has not yet happened in an industry such as mobile telecoms! Amazon (first books, now almost everything), Zappos (first only shoes, now part of Amazon and, well almost everything), eBay, PayPal, First Direct and any other number of online banking services), Charles Schwab, eTrade and those folks (stock trading), Okado (groceries), Money Supermarket, confused.com, etc. (insurance brokerage), etc., etc., etc., etc. Virtually all e-commerce business models rely on realizing higher efficiencies through digital scale combined with lower overheads.

And virtually all of them originally were told that this was a niche for a few, that only geeky people with no money would use it. And in virtually all those cases, the doubters were wrong. So, then, O2, let your “gaffer” (that’s the title the giffgaff CEO goes by) lose and go for it. There’s money to be made (and I might just be persuaded to leave Vodafone, too).

To the others (Vodafone, are you listening?): it’s not too late. Get in whilst you can!

Microsoft & Skype

Allegedly, this morning Microsoft will announce it will buy Skype for $8.5bn. It is Microsoft’s largest investment into the digital realm so far (and a nice cash-out for the people who bailed Skype out from eBay a while ago; the valuation at the time apparently was put at $2.75bn). Besides these being big numbers (and allowing Skype not having to worry about an IPO anymore), this opens an opportunity for a new kind of animal in the communications corner of things. And here is why:

Microsoft is legendarily late to the party when it came to smartphones. Their Windows Phone 7 OS was labelled as too little too late although it received positive reviews on the merits. Then it struck a much discussed deal with Nokia, the ailing (former?) phone giant to ship its phones with WP7. So, if we add Skype, will this create the torso of a new type of communication service? Think Nokia handset + Windows Phone 7 + Skype = mobile VoIP on a large scale.

Did we forget an ingredient though? Ah, bandwidth. Hm… Skype is understandably much maligned by most carriers (with the notable exception of Three) as it shifts revenues from (high-margin) voice to (lower-margin) data. With most carriers struggling under the increased network loads higher-end smartphones consume in terms of data, a discussion started recently about contributions for such data throughput. Now, a lot of the larger carriers are multi-play animals: be it Verizon, Vodafone, France Telekom/Orange, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, Telstra, etc, etc, they all provide both mobile networks as well as fixed-line broadband. It will hence be not that easy to just walk around them and “just make it so”.

Many people have talked about the ubiquity of WiFi hotspots and such like in many areas but I would humbly suggest that this is daydreaming rather than a robust basis for a truly ubiquitous device such as a mobile phone just yet (and it perhaps never will). The future would seem to lie in mobile networks rather than fixed-line anyhow (LTE and all), which means that there will need to be some sort of rapport between vendors and service providers (such as Nokia/Microsoft/Skype) and carriers, and even mighty Nokia has already lost a fight over Skype in the past (see also here). Likewise, Google had come out with lofty promises as to carrier integration and has failed miserably to deliver the goods so far (carrier billing on Android Market anyone?).

So voices that hail the arrival of a new era might well be a little premature. Now, given that Microsoft can work with Skype on the desktop side of things as well will ease the transition significantly. However, the be-all-end-all solution it is not, at least not yet. And if Microsoft and Nokia can deliver remains to be seen, too, I guess.

Back to work then…

Which handset? An update…

Two months ago, I mused over handsets, packages, and the like. The reason was – if I may briefly recall – that my contract ran out. I reported on a number of options but never told what happened. Here’s what:

The Carrier

I hinted as much before: it is Vodafone who have me in their grip now. The data roaming rates did it (although they have fairly decent international rates, too, specifically with Vodafone Passport, which must be one of the first programmes where a large multi-national carrier leverages its geographical spread; T-Mobile, take note!).

The Handset

Quick recap: I was looking at device options (the contracts I tend to be on are unhealthily big, which normally gives you a free device on top of it, and why the heck not). Since I already have an iPhone (3 and 4), a Google Nexus and various Nokias, I thought what next? Do I try out another Android device? Do I give Windows Phone 7 a go? Or do I return to my old love, Blackberry. And the last one won me over. So I fell for it, and went with the brand-new Blackberry 9800 Torch. Touch screen plus QUERTY plus Blackberry e-mail. You should think that that’s pretty need and, really, all you could wish for (sorry, Microsoft, I didn’t dare – yet).

Trials and Tribulations

But, alas, it was not so. It turned out that two-odd years in the claws of the iPhone and Android had seriously spoilt me, also – and this was concerning – with respect to e-mail. I first learned that I could actually type pretty damn quickly on a touch keyboard now (better on the iPhone, less so on the Nexus), so the keyboard did not really do it. But that was not really it. The little things did it:

  • Checking multiple e-mails at once so you can delete or file them all in one go? I’m sure there was one rather ingenious shortcut to do this but it was not very obvious and I had forgotten how it worked. Do I look it up on the web? Nah, it should really just work, shouldn’t it? It just felt clunky.
  • Maps: a nightmare! It put me regularly miles away from where I was (and I was actually on home turf, so – thankfully – was able to survive without accurate directions.
  • Browser: unusable (and, yes, I know it already is a little better than the old one).
  • App World: slow and not very well stocked, is it? And, mind you, I was not looking for a gazillion funny novelty apps like light sabers and such. But even some fairly standard ones were not available.
  • Speed: the handset does not run on the quickest of processors, and you could feel it. Some latency in certain processes, no really smooth pinch-zooms, etc, etc.
  • Camera: OK but not more.
  • Even the beautiful Blackberry Messenger (or BBM as it is also affectionately known) managed to confuse me a little: where on earth can I find that 3D barcode that allows me to add a contact on BBM? I still haven’t found it. Once up and running, it is a beauty as it always was. However, there are now many IM apps that are similarly good, and with most smartphone users on data plans, the fact that BBM is free might no longer matter as much.

On the good side? There is of course Brickbreaker (new high-score: 28,350 (!!!)) but, aside from that, the fairly solid feel of the handset, the nice rubbery back (really nice in fact) and the somewhat quaint but familiar design lines plus decent touch was all very good. I really liked the handset as such. But what was in it, not so much.

The New Kid

So – you probably guessed it – I gave it back and exchanged it for an HTC Desire HD. Only a couple of years ago, this would have been unthinkable. Not only was I a fairly die-hard Blackberry fan but to replace a Blackberry with a Taiwanese newcomer handset? Voluntarily? Noooo! However, it is gorgeous (besides being a bit of the big – no, really big – side). It does all the things that so frustrated me on the Blackberry so much better. Well, slicker at least. E-mail set-up is a breeze for Gmail but only a little less onerous than on the Blackberry for others (and, yes, the QUERTY does help for weird password combinations), but, once done, it works really well. And then, there’s of course the little things: 8 mega-pixel camera with stunning quality (although the lens sticks out a little at the back, which might be not so good), comparatively wholesome goodness when it comes to apps (in spite of the shortfalls of Android Market), heck, it synced all my apps from my Nexus automatically. And, Apple get this, it adds little raindrops (and a windscreen wiper) in one quick animation should it rain where ever you are (which, in England’s North-West, it does quite a lot, I’m afraid). Sweet! Browser works beautifully, maps come with proper satellite navigation on par with dedicated devices, and so on, and so forth.

Mind you, I am not yet sure if I may not change back to my iPhone 4 (which is, let’s face it, damn slick!). But I will give the Desire its run, and it does pretty well so far.

Blackberry Needs to Up the Ante!

But let’s look at my old friend Blackberry. Read through the last two paragraphs, and you know where Blackberry needs to up the ante. The Torch – its newest handset with its newest OS – feels slow, sluggish, dated, laboured.

But not all might be lost: last week, at CES, I could catch a glimpse of the future: RIM’s Blackberry PlayBook, which runs on QNX, rumoured to be the foundation for the next generation of “proper” Blackberries, too. And a beauty it is: much more hardware power (dual-core processor, namely a 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430), swish graphics (1080p video inclusive), really impressive multi-tasking (HD video + game + websites + whatever open in parallel and seamless change from one to the other in an easy and casual swipe with no lag in any of it), and it will apparently be available on Sprint’s 4G network. Check here for the full specs.

It did however lack e-mail! Yes, you read that correctly: you can apparently not get RIM’s mother of all killer apps on the PlayBook – unless you also happen to have a “normal” Blackberry (or something to that end; the folks at the Blackberry booth were a little shy about this). What were they thinking???

But let’s take stock. What does RIM have? A – so far – healthy balance sheet, good hardware, still great e-mail service infrastructure (albeit not as unassailable as it used to be), in BBM a hit in the youth market and – arguably – a bit more of a runway than most because of the – again arguably – longer times it will take enterprise IT departments to swap systems (or something along these lines; Dell is probably an exception so far). In QNX, it also seems to have a really powerful OS at its disposal (just add e-mail, please). And, finally, it has a proud history of very good handsets (the Bold must have been one of the best ever) as well as demonstrated expertise to break into new verticals (as the Pearl had shown).

So, my dear friends from Waterloo, Ontario: do it. I think you can, just show us, will you? 🙂

What matters: Handsets or Packages?

It is this time again: my phone contract comes up for renewal. And – as anyone who is following this blog will know (to recap, look here), I have not been all too happy with the treatment I got from O2 UK. So today I started looking around. Given my rather fat tariff requirements, carriers normally throw in all sorts of goodies (scil. free handsets), so started there. I have an iPhone 4 and a Nexus One already, so started to see what else is out there, as there are:

Then I started looking at where, what, how I could get it and at what price, and the UK carrier labyrinth was entered: The Omnia 7 is carried by 3, Orange and T-Mobile, not by O2 or Vodafone (at least I couldn’t find anything to that end). The HD7 is an Orange exclusive, the Trophy is a Vodafone exclusive. The Galaxy S and the N8 seem to be with all of them.

Step 2: tariffs. With an unhealthy amount of traveling abroad to do, my main cost item on phone bills regularly is data roaming, so this is where my sensitivity lies (because of the eye-watering bills I regularly get, I am not bothered about 600 or 900 UK any-network minutes costing £5 more or less), and it became clear quickly: Orange, T-Mobile and 3 are out of the race (their charges are even higher than O2’s). Vodafone looks good (about 1/3 of O2’s rates) but O2 claims to still have their Blackberry tariff for international data roaming (although I struggled to find it on their website). Now, THAT would bring my bill down by a cool £150-200 a month or so. Enter Blackberry. The Bold (which I dearly loved when I had it) or the Torch (which gets decent but still very mixed reviews)? And then: O2 again? In spite of my anger with them?

And then I started to compromise: anything exclusive to Orange, T-Mobile or 3 was out of the question (because data roaming is pretty much a killer for me), which boils it down to Blackberry and O2 or any of the others on Vodafone (which would mean that I couldn’t get what started being my favourite, the Samsung Omnia 7). Hang on: I compromise over some shoddy pounds? Is the handset then not so all important as one might have believed when reading all those blogs, news blitzes and tech publications over the last months?

And, yes, I think it is true to say that – at least in instances where there are certain usage requirements (in my case data roaming), the package is what rules. This is perhaps then the wedge that the carriers –  scrambling for meaning in this new app store world – could use to pry that dump pipe/smart phone dichotomy open. How’s that for an idea?

So, good folks at the carriers, listen up: do it (oh, Vodafone, and get me that Omnia 7, will you? 😉 ).

Spotlight: M-PESA / Mobile Money

At the recent ForumOxford conference, Mi-Pay‘s Simon Cahill reported a most remarkable case of the use of mobile. He told us about the Kenyan operator Safaricom (in which Vodafone holds a stake) and its M-PESA service (which now also operates in Tanzania, South Africa and Afghanistan, too; you can apparently also send money to Kenya from the UK; see here a TV ad).

M-PESA is not new; it launched to the market already in 2007 and a pilot commenced as early as 2005 (here’s a link to a background document).

The success is staggering: according to Mr Cahill, no less than 20% of Kenya’s GDP is running through mobile money. Yes, I did write that: 20%!!! Safaricom asserts it moves nearly €150m worth of transactions per day (which would make it larger than Western Union).

It works basically like top-ups for prepaid phones: one party sends money to another one using the recipient’s phone number (and the sender’s PIN). The recipient will be notified by SMS and can then either use it as phone credit or receive a pay-out through an agent. Interestingly, Safaricom partnered with thousands of merchants, groceries, etc because the banking system in Kenya’s rural parts is so thinly developed that people could not have used it appropriately. Apparently, a lot of people do not actually take the cash out but keep the balance in the phone (for top-ups or just for keeps). This means that, as an aside, Safaricom is allegedly saving $12m for not having to print and distribute top-up cards for its prepaid customers.

M-PESA has more than 10m users in Kenya alone, and with the contribution to the country’s GDP as outlined above, it clearly is one of THE greatest mobile services in the world! And a final nugget by Mr Cahill: according to (I am quoting from memory, which might be a little shaky) the World Bank, mobile banking contributes 2-3% growth p.a. to the economy of a developing or emerging country.

Awesome!

ForumOxford Conference on Mobile Apps & Technologies

Next week, on 15 October 2010, there will be the fantastic opportunity to bask in the glory of Oxford University and attend what many say is one of THE outstanding conferences in the mobile space, namely the University of Oxford’s Mobile Apps and Technologies Conference 2010.

I will be speaking as will James Elles, MEP and folks from Vodafone, IBM, Edelman and many more, including some of the most eminent analysts and strategists of the mobile space. The conference prides itself that it does not deliver any sales pitches, and it is not even very expensive!

So come along and join us for a great day of learning, discussing and networking.

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