Well my two average-mobile-user girl friends, Jo and Nat, were not in the mood to play with mobile applications this evening. Bit of a shame — I’d hoped to get their opinion on Mobizines.
Jo’s not best pleased with Vodafone. She did the stupid thing and got her Sony Ericsson soaked and totally written off due to water damage. (She declined to elaborate on the exact circumstances). She has insurance so Vodafone whacked her out a temporary phone, which was ‘a load of crap’ (her words).
Totally Shit ARPU
Style is exceptionally important. Style and functionality. If you recall, Jo is a sporadic text and picture messager. Well, the ‘totally shit Nokia’ that they gave her short term must have reduced Vodafone’s revenues by about £3 a day. She was still texting her boyfriend, but recently they’ve been whacking each other picture messages all day.
Rude text messages
Her second issue, other than having to walk around with an embarrasingly crap Christmas Cracker Nokia, was the fact that the phone hadn’t been wiped before she got it. There were still text messages in the memory — and, with some scandal, Jo told me there were a heck of a lot of rude ones in the inbox and sent items. Oooh my.
Brother’s Nokia
Jo’s brother came to the rescue with a half decent looking Nokia flip phone. It’s an o2-configureed handset, so while it can do pictures, she can’t send them anywhere as she’s no idea how to sort out the GRPS / MMS settings.
What idiot, what absolute idiot, sat down and said, ‘you know what, Vodafone’s APN is ‘internet’ so let’s make ours ‘general.t-mobile.co.uk’, you know, just to be different?’ I understand the various minor technical issues — but really, every handset in the UK should be factory configured with UK standard settings, irrespective of network you’re actually using. I estimate Vodafone have lost about £18 quid in revenue by sending Jo a shitty temporary handset.
£25 and you’re done
Jo was also less than impressed at the fact she has to cough up £25 tomorrow at the Vodafone store to get her new Sony Ericsson. I explained that this was actually a pretty good insurance deal — since although it’s about a year old, the model she had is still very expensive. She was hoping they’d upgrade her! I think £25 is reasonable myself. She’ll be back online and pushing her monthly ARPU past £100 in no time.
Video Calling
Natalie, however, had nothing to report.
Me: ‘Anything catch your eye? Any mobile campaigns, advertising, you know?’
Her: ‘Nope.’
Me: ‘Ahh. Ok, what do you think about Mobile TV? Would you use it?’
Her: ‘No? I don’t do that much travelling. I’ll watch TV at home.’
Interesting. For Natalie, mobile TV, as she’s seen and her from the media, is something you might use if you were on a bus — or perhaps waiting for a bus. However, it seems that the concept of Mobile TV is still relatively alien to her. Jo reckoned she’s been offered it by Vodafone (her handset is capable) but declined it. She couldn’t give me a specific reason why. I think there’s a lot more consumer education required.
Back to Natalie:
Me: ‘What about video calling?’
Her: ‘It’s useless, I’ve tried it. There’s never a signal.’
Natalie and her boyfriend were some of the first customers who opted to try out Three when it launched. They both got those huge Motorola handsets and were excited to try out video calling. But it didn’t work. It spectacularly failed to meet their expectations. This was about three years ago.
I explain that technology has moved on leaps and bounds. Natalie is doubtful.
Me: ‘Would you video-call Jo if your handset was capable?’
Her: ‘Hmm, probably .. yeah.. bit of fun.’
Me: ‘Often?’
Her: ‘Maybe.. depends how much it costs’
So there’s potential. Definitely potential. Give it another iteration of handset technical development. Get the 3g video calling handsets into more hands and bring the call rate prices down and I think the market will grow. It’s far too easy to get caught up in the excitement of new technologies like video calling and assume that the mass market will totally accept them right away.