Tesco Telecoms kicks off digital review
21/05/09
Marketing Magazine - 06/05/09
Tesco Telecoms is reviewing its digital arrangements and has begun to approach agencies about pitching for the business. The brief will include an overhaul of the Tesco Telecoms online shop, as well as other digital customer communications. The review comes as the retailer expands its Tesco Mobile brand’s in-store presence.
Tesco Telecoms has previously used agencies including Ruby, Harvest Digital and Whippet UK for digital work. It said its above-the-line creative agency Red Brick Road would not be affected by this review.
In February, Tesco Mobile launched a national TV, outdoor, press and radio campaign positioning the brand as a cheaper alternative to better-known rivals such as T-Mobile.
Tesco Mobile rebranded last year in an attempt to take the service upmarket. More recent activity, however, has returned to the brand’s value roots by promoting its ‘triple your credit’ pay-as-you-go tariffs.
The work featured a blue animated character claiming that the Tesco Mobile service is not glamorous but generous. The ads focused on a deal giving customers £30 free credit if they topped up £15 a month. Tesco Mobile, which has about 2m customers, also recently launched a £10 pay-monthly tariff, adding to its £15-a-month, £20-a-month and £25-a-month deals.
Revolution Magazine - 07/05/09
Spotify is planning to up the ante in its battle with iTunes by allowing users to store an unlimited amount of tracks for £9.99 per month, Revolution can reveal. The free music streaming service first moved into the download market in March after striking a deal with 7Digital to allow consumers to click-to-buy more than 6 million tracks from the site.
However, Spotify is now planning to allow users to store an unlimited number of tracks for £9.99 per month. The move potentially represents a challenge to iTunes, where the cheapest albums cost £7.48. The initiative will allow Spotify subscribers to store an unlimited number of tracks on their PC for a temporary period, differentiating it from rival offers which enable users to download and own MP3 files indefinitely. Under plans to beef up its subscription service, Spotify is also poised to launch a mobile service in the UK this summer.
The initiative will allow users to sync their mobile handsets to their Spotify account, meaning they can listen to individual tracks and playlists on the move. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told Revolution that the company is in talks with mobile network operators and handset manufacturers about offering the service as part of a package. Rival MP3-based offerings include Nokia Comes with Music, which gives subscribers a year of unlimited music downloads. Plans are yet to be finalised and Spotify’s core business will continue to focs on providing users with free access to music, together with paid-for MP3 downloads via external partnerships with companies like 7Digital.
Spotify, which only came out of beta in February, now has over one million users across the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden. According to the Stockholm-based company around 40,000 new users sign up to the service every day, of which 50 per cent to 60 per cent are from the UK. The majority of users choose to access Spotify for free in return for receiving radio-style ads.
However, the company is keen to encourage more users to sign up for its paid-for, ad-free service by offering unlimited downloads, improved functionality and original content. Over the coming months Spotify plans to allow subscribers to access a range of exclusive content, including videos and interviews with artists.
Mobile - 11/05/09
O2 is spending £6m on a new family centric marketing campaign to endorse new products such as the Joggler. According to Marketing magazine, O2’s new touch-screen Joggler device, O2 calendar, and Your Family Bolt-on mobile tariff will be featured in the campaign breaking on 18 May – the adverts will be on television, cinema, print and online media. The Joggler was introduced by the network in March and claims to be able to organise a family without the need for notes on the fridge. The device, which can be used by customers on any network, connects to home broadband so no Sim card is required. It has a calendar and can send up to 50 free texts to O2 mobiles. The Joggler offers weather, traffic and news updates and can play games and music. It can also be used as a calculator or alarm. The device will cost £149.99, but is free for O2 customers if taken instead of a handset upgrade. The campaign will feature an animated family of magnets on a fridge.
Mobile News - 06/05/09
Union Connect is seeking meetings with Vodafone UK execs, claiming that the network has not given a sufficient explanation behind its decision to freeze salary rates this financial year.
Vodafone has not given a reasonable explanation for imposing a pay freeze on its UK workforce, union Connect said last month as it sought meetings with representatives from the network. Vodafone announced in March that it would freeze salaries and bonuses for all its 10,000 UK staff as part of its strategy to cut £1 billion in costs, as well as cutting 500 jobs.
In a memo to staff, chief executive Guy Laurence said it was a “tough” but “responsible” decision to make and that agreeing to pay rises this year would have meant increasing the number of redundancies being made. Staff with company cars were also asked to keep them for longer.
A Connect spokesman said the union had requested meetings with Vodafone to “assess and agree a way forward” on pay for 2009. He said: “While blanket emails on pay have been sent out by the business, we have had no proposal from the business in line with what is required through the union recognition agreement and we have not received a rationale or explanation for a zero rise.
We would expect such a proposal to be robust, verifiable and potentially reflect a business that was making no profit, paying no share dividends and giving no rises for senior managers and executives. In addition we would expect a business looking to make such a proposal to give proper consideration to alternatives. At this stage we see no evidence of them doing so.” The spokesman said Vodafone had assured Connect it understood the need to hold discussions on pay and had suggested holding them jointly with Ericsson, where a number of staff have been outsourced to.
A meeting had been proposed for April 8 but the Connect spokesman said: “Despite many reminders Vodafone did not arrange one and it continues to offer no explanation as to why doing so has proven impossible for several weeks. We have held a conference call but we have made clear to Vodafone and Ericsson that this is inadequate.”
Vodafone responded with the following statement: “We have recently communicated with our people about pay and reward. The Vodafone UK Executive Board has decided that there will be no pay rise for this coming financial year (2009/10).
If a salary rise had been agreed, it would have forced us to increase the number of redundancies made recently. This is a tough decision to make, but a responsible one. We have also explained that the employee bonus scheme is not currently on track to pay out for this year. By focusing relentlessly on our customers we believe that the rewards will come for everyone.”
The Telegraph - 10/05/09
The HTC Magic mobile phone offers a better-sized handset than the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Storm. Smartphones with dedicated applications stores are nothing new - Palm did this first, years ago. But for business users, the availability of relevant programs is valuable to anyone who wants to customise their phone. So the iPhone’s 35,000+ applications in the App Store must include something you need, surely? Now, Vodafone users, sick of the fact that the Apple handset is not available on their network, may turn to the HTC Magic instead.
The HTCMagic uses Google’s excellent Android operating system. While the corresponding application range, called Android Market, only has a fraction of Apple’s number, there are many options of interest to professional users. Nearly all of them are free.
These include real-time stock information, currency converters, weather forecasts, a credit card payment-taking system (for USA ePay account holders only, mind) and expenses setups like Receipt Filer Lite, which allow you to photograph your receipts to file later. As with other stores, more programs are added daily. Thanks partly to the superbly responsive touchscreen, the Magic is a pleasure to use. Swipe a finger down the screen and you’ll see any new email, messaging or other notifications.
Brush upwards to reveal the program menu. And if you’re not confident with touchscreens yet, there’s a navigation ball you can use to guide you instead. Email delivery is very efficient, though BlackBerry remains the gold standard. The software is neatly designed, though never quite matches Apple’s hey-look-at-that cuteness. Vodafone’s tariff includes unlimited email and online browsing (subject to fair usage).
Like the iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm, it’s a very efficient way of keeping in touch with your emails. Unlike the other two, it’s a better-sized handset.
Mobile - 07/05/09
O2 is in the early stages of deploying a revenue share model with manufacturers over the payment on handsets. The proposed model is based on paying manufacturers 50% up front for the cost of handsets, with the remainder based on how much customers spend over the term of their contract. Such discussions with manufacturers had previously been tabled by O2 as well as Vodafone over two years ago. Those talks faltered due to manufacturers reluctance to take the impact on cashflows, and a failure to agree on the aspects of customer spend they would share.
Sources suggest O2 is now more confident that it could implement a scheme after its experience of a revenue share model with Apple, and the belief that the mobiles market is at a more mature stage. One insider said: ‘Handset volumes are significantly down for the manufacturers, competition has got really tough and there are new entrants wanting to make an impact.’ The source said manufacturers now faced a situation where they had to be ‘more amenable to adopt new models’.
Although the plan is in the early stages, O2 handset chiefs Steve Alder and Ian Clarke are understood to have sounded out several manufacturers about the proposed scheme. Finance directors at manufacturers are concerned over the cashflow implications of such a scheme, with no ability to forecast customer spend and consequently the payments. One source said: ‘There are also difficulties on how you calibrate ARPU. Is it total bill or outside the bundle? That will penalise us if an operator puts it on an aggressive tariff, or if the proposition offers good value to the customer.’ Another sceptical source said: ‘This is something that looks great on PowerPoint, terrible in the real world.’ Former Vodafone UK CEO Nick Read told Mobile two years ago he was pursuing a revenue share deal with manufacturers, stating: ‘I don’t think we’ll go to a total revenue share arrangement, but do I see a component of share to cap the cost of hardware loss up front? Yes, people are interested and certainly I am because it aligns our concerns.’ O2 declined to comment.
Bono flashes his BlackBerry in a battle of smart phones…
The Times - 10/05/09
The cool executive tool is now being pitched at the man in the street. When Bono strides onto the stage at the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona on June 30, Jim Balsillie will be a happy man. The beginning of U2’s world tour marks the start of a high-profile sponsorship for BlackBerry. This tie-up is designed to speed up the journey of the gadget from the businessman’s briefcase to the pocket of the ordinary consumer. For Balsillie, the joint chief executive of Research in Motion (RIM), it shows he intends to do more than simply defend his patch in the battle with Apple and Nokia for supremacy in the growing smart-phone market, where the mobile phone has morphed into a handheld computer. What started life as a portable e-mail device, wrecking family weekends, has become something the younger generation uses to listen to music through applications such as Pandora and Slacker. Pictures of Barack Obama clutching his BlackBerry while on the election trail have only burnished its credentials. Top of Form 3
Bottom of Form 3
“Everyone is using it in Los Angeles and New York, in every age group,” said Chris De Wolfe, co-founder of the social networking website MySpace, which supplied BlackBerry’s most downloaded application. “They have really widened the demographic in a big way.” More than half of BlackBerry’s 25m users are ordinary consumers. It is not just for businessmen these days. While iPhone has grabbed the headlines for its sleek design, BlackBerry has held its own. Both generate revenues from customers going to their applications sites, which sell small downloads covering everything from weather reports to virtual pets. Smart phones, representing 12% of the mobile pie, are the only segment of the market expected to grow this year, when most consumers are delaying upgrading their handsets to save money. Figures from Gartner show that Apple’s share of the smart-phone market rose from 5.2% to 10.7% last year, while BlackBerry increased 10.9% to 19.5%.
The big loser was Nokia, whose N-series has lost its lustre, although it still holds a commanding 40.8% of the market. Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi thinks smart-phone sales will be up 27% this year, against a 4% drop in the size of the overall mobile market. Balsillie said the thinking behind BlackBerry’s shift, which began when he launched the Pearl almost three years ago, was driven by simple mathematics. “If two-thirds of the market are not business customers and you don’t address it, you seriously sub-optimise your efforts to build your business,” he said. Others think that handset improvements and customers’ higher expectations made it easier to broaden the BlackBerry’s appeal as an e-mail device with internet, attracting customers who today access Facebook on the move instead of sending texts. “The coming change was obvious,” said Patrick Chomet, global director of terminals at Vodafone, which joined BlackBerry to produce the Storm handset. “The development of colour displays in the past couple of years, along with access to great games and music, bigger memory and touch display have been fundamental in moving the BlackBerry from a businessman’s gadget to a cool consumer handset.” Its progress has not been without cost, however. Ramping up advertising and sales has knocked RIM’s margins below their traditional 50%. “Our focus is to drive mass adoption of the BlackBerry,” said Balsillie. “If it comes with some incremental margin compromise, this is a small price to pay.”
For consumers, the choice comes down to whether they prefer BlackBerry’s keyboard or iPhone’s touchscreen. The keyboard is better for e-mail. The touchscreen is better for surfing the internet. RIM hopes to cover both angles with one of its next designs. Shareholders are supportive, pushing the share price up 73% so far this year.
To celebrate the intense interest in the new Nokia N97 competition — phones4u are giving away a free N97 — simply fill in your email address and the winner will be picked by on the 23rd of June!
Or alternatively click here for access to page — http://www.phones4u.co.uk/NOKIA_N97_Competition/ –
Phone-deals.net has entered — have you?
Good Luck x
Nokia is well known for its superior and quality mobile phones. Nokia is also popular amongst buyers due to its stylish designs as well as ease of use. The nokia n97 is considered as the world’s most advanced mobile computer. It supports up to 48 GB of storage which includes 32GB on board memory.
With more people who prefer to browse the internet while they’re on the go, this smartphone is certainly one that buyers should look out for. The N97 is well equipped with functionality and by far looks more sophisticated and elegant aesthetically. It is a 2G as well as a 3G enabled mobile phone.
The phone allows users to make face to face video calls on its wide resolution screen with others around the world which definitely is a plus point for those who are on business. Users can easily expand its external memory with the help of a microSD memory card of up to 16 GB, while the N96 can only hold a memory card of up to 8GB. N96 mobile phone includes many connectivity features like EDGE, GPRS and WLAN technology in order to access the internet.
Although these two mobile phones offer a slightly different functions, they certainly offer a great mobile experience to buyers.
Samsung introduces the all new world’s first full touch phone with slide-out 3×4 keypad! The users can freely use the Samsung Tocco Ultra mobile as a touch screen mobile or use it as an ordinary classic mobile with keypad. The phone measures up at 110×51.5×12.7 mm and weighs only 116 grams. This mobile has got features like drag and drop of widgets by which all your favourate programs can be run just on a single touch.
The mobile has got a GPS chip for global position tracking and maps to show where you are. The mobile’s 8 MP camera, LED flash and self-portrait mirror are mounted on the rear side of the top half, so when the slide is closed you won’t see them.It even has got a light sensor to adjust display brightness of photos. The display is 2.8″ capable of 240×400 pixel resolution. The battery used in this mobile is a 880 mAh Li-Ion battery, rated for 300 hours of standby and 4 hours of talk time. This mobile comes with 90MB internal memory and can support upto 32GB micro SD memory card. Overall the phone is a multipurpose entertainment phone.
By now, I expect you’re familiar with Mobile Broadband. If you haven’t tried it already, I assume you’ve seen it offered in your local Vodafone or O2 store. There are several versions of mobile broadband out there and several tariffs / data plans to boot. The most common version however seems to be that which is delivered over wireless via a USB dongle. These devices are no bigger than a few inches and simply plug directly into the side of your notebook / laptop. You then simply install a piece of software and you’re away, enjoying high speed interest access wherever you like (within reason). I have also seen offerings from T-Mobile in the form of an express card for newer laptop computers and PCMCIA (old school) cards for older notebooks. These, from what I gather, provide the same sort of service, it’s just that the hardware is slightly different.
Getting a mobile broadband package from a mobile provider is as easy as getting a mobile contract, you choose the tariff, sign the form and get the hardware for free (in most cases). Some mobile providers also provide a pay as you go service if you like in which you can buy the hardware (USB Dongle) for a fixed cost and then pay each month that you require the access. This is ideal if you only want to use the obile broadband whilst you’re waiting for a fixed line installation or if you’re planning to do some travelling and require Internet access.
Like all things broadband, the technology is changing quickly. Each time I see an offer for mobile broadband in the shop windows, the speeds seem to get quicker, the data capacities larger and the cost lower. It’ll be exciting to see what happens over the next couple of years to say the least.
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