One of the reasons Skype was so successful — at least in the early days — was in part due to geek wonderment. I remember watching my father — who started his career installing telephones for British Telecom — giggle with delight at the technology which enabled us to talk across vast distances with magnificent audio clarity.
The ability to converse with friends and business colleagues ‘properly’ has always been one of the best things about Skype.
I wonder, then, what the introduction of Orange’s Mobile HD Voice will do for the market?
High Definition Mobile Voice will apparently enable ‘crystal clear superior sound quality’ for Orange UK customers. In order to get this clarity, you will need to have an ‘HD enabled’ handset — something Orange is working on with handset manufacturers.
I can imagine this becoming a preference for me. I can really see my friends and colleagues shifting to a service such as this — if it performs to expectation. Of course, quality of network (i.e. signal) is still going to be important. It’s no good being able to converse in ‘HD audio’ if the network is continually busy.
I look forward to seeing the trials! There’s a little more information about the announcement at Orange’s newsroom.
I am also happy to see some innovation in this segment of the marketplace. Good stuff, Orange.
Have a look at this photo sent in by a rather annoyed reader. It’s from the back of yesterday’s Guardian UK.
Don’t you think it’s getting ridiculous that o2 are still running the ‘iPhone only on o2′ advertisements? I first wrote about this two weeks ago.
At what point does this become a trade description violation?
The o2 team — many of whom are usually avid readers and responders to the MIR site, have been mysteriously quiet on this issue. What’s going on chaps?
Surely this isn’t a deliberate marketing strategy from the UK’s 2nd largest network? Surely they’re not that panicked by Orange’s entry into the marketplace?
Further to my post earlier this evening (Orange sold 30,000 iPhones today ), here’s the full update I managed to get from my contact there:
Orange are delighted to reveal, that as of 4pm today Orange had sold more than 30,000 iPhones across the UK – smashing what we believe is the previously published first day sales records for a handset in the UK
I can well believe this, especially when you count the number of people who signed-up in advance online.
Then Orange’s iPhone app success…
At the same time, Orange’s first ever exclusive UK app – Orange Wednesdays – has gone to the top slot in the Entertainment Category, and hit second place in the free apps chart on the Apple App Store. The app combines the latest film reviews and trailers with up to date info on what’s on, where films are showing, information on how to get there and the ability to redeem the 2-for-1 Orange Wednesdays cinema voucher on your Orange iPhone.
And finally, the (slightly contentious) point:
Orange’s 3G mobile network covers more people in the UK than any other, and is currently the focus of our recently launched £multi-million pound advertising campaign, which from today features the iPhone, entitled ‘You’re Covered’.
I’ve been seeing the ads everywhere. 3UK are understandably spitting blood claiming their network is bigger.
A strange thing happened in the United Kingdom this morning.
A lot of normal people breathed a sign of relief.
Nay!
A sigh of excitement.
I’ve been speaking to a lot of normobs recently. I’ve been getting out on the mean streets of London and I’ve been canvassing opinion about the iPhone and the rest of the marketplace. (Granted, in the last two weeks I’ve not made it North of Watford so my experiences are highly focused around the South — and London in particular)
What’s fascinating is that there’s a significant pent-up demand for iPhones.
Talk to the analysts and most of them will tell you — flippantly (and highly inaccurately) — that ‘whoever wanted an iPhone has bought one already’. That is, my dear analyst friends, what we in the real world call, ATBP. (“A Total Bollocks Position“)
Changing networks is a total unmitigated nightmare. A TOTAL nightmare. Something that any sane individual wouldn’t attempt unless they were really, really, REALLY serious. Most normobs in the UK flirt with leaving their network. They flirt because that’s built straight into the model.
It’s so integrated that every network has their own flirting department. You and I know it as ‘retentions’. They’re the people behind the ‘press 5 if you’re thinking of leaving us’ option on your network’s customer services line. It’s them that you call in the heat of the moment — when you’ve seen red, for whatever reason, usually some mistake or misunderstanding — or a series of tiny mistakes that outrage you to the point of reaching for the matches as you pass the operator’s local shop.
The flirting chappies and ladies in the retentions department turn even the seasoned pro-normob into a gibbering bundle of happiness in a few minutes.
You phone up telling them you’re leaving ‘to get that iPhone’ and they’ve got the patter nailed to the ground, ready to floor you.
Would you like 500 extra minutes? A month? For… for free?
AND we can give you this really good phone that, you know Sir, it’s better than the iPhone. [Insert a description of some bollocks handset that will SORT OF keep you quiet for a while. It's going to have to keep you quiet because it comes with a 24-month contract.]
It’s even worse when you walk into your local Carphone Warehouse. You can see the pain on the face of the chap when you tell him you’re going to move networks and you DON’T have your transfer code. Because he has to sit there whilst you spend 45 minutes on the phone trying to tell the flirters at your mobile operator that you want to leave.
Of course, they ask what you’re leaving for — in terms of price plan.
So you tell them.
They then beat it.
And… the Carphone Warehouse chap, head in hands, just hopes you’ll hang in there.
But you’re sitting thinking that it would be a lot easier if you just said yes to your existing operator… and they did promise to send the bright shiny new handset next-day. And they said it was better! Better than the iPhone!
That, my dear analyst friends, is why there is still a TON of demand for the iPhone from Orange. And from Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3UK.
People can’t stand changing operators. They’ve tried it. It’s a mind-fluck. It’s not something your average normob wants to do. Ever.
Most normobs I’ve met who’ve been after an iPhone (but weren’t willing to swap to o2) simply put it out of their mind. They’d flirt with the concept now and again. But changing was just too difficult a prospect.
This morning a whole raft of £35/month contract customers — who’ve previously been sitting staring at their bollocks Nokia / Sony Ericsson / Samsung / Windows Mobile Piece of Shit — are now free to contemplate a treat.
Say what you like about the iPhone, it’s like a plasma or flat-panel TV.
Everybody loved them. Everybody wanted one. A few of your friends finally splashed the cash and got one. Then, before you know it, the prices came down to acceptable levels and woosh… you want one. And what’s more — shit — you can actually *afford* one.
And don’t think your average normob is going to give a toss about the unlimited data policy that Orange is offering. I’ve seen the hulabalooooo and it’s irrelevant to the average chap and girl on the street.
They don’t want to get screwed. And what’s more, they won’t. Orange simply cannot afford a full page wailer in the Daily Mail about some poor guy being billed £4k for watching the Top Gear series on his iPhone.
The average normob doesn’t give a toss about the price of the device. Neither did the 1 million o2 iPhone customers.
As long as it’s roughly 30-quid a month, it doesn’t matter.
It’s an iPhone.
It’s like a plasma TV. Tens of thousands of Orange customers will shortly be thinking they deserve a bit of tech luvin’ and they’ll splash out. Mark my words.
So happy iPhone day to all the Orange UK customers.
And if you’re a handset manufacturer operating in the United Kingdom making devices that retail around the £35-45/month contract mark, take out your projections spreadsheet and knock another few percentage points off your target audience, you won’t be getting them back any time soon.
For a long, long time, if you wanted to buy an iPhone, you had to buy it through exclusive supplier, o2. End of story.
Whilst this made a certain amount of sense to the geeky few (“Well, obviously, they bent over the most for Apple, right?”), it has been a source of continual ire for your average normob (“normal mobile user”).
Not a week has gone by when I haven’t met a normob who’s talked about the iPhone and who’s stated that their *number one* reason for *not getting one* is because it’s on o2.
“Just swap networks,” I’ve prompted.
The response has invariably been something like:
- “No, I like [operator name] too much.”
- “No, that’s such a hassle.”
- “No, I’ve been with [operator name] for years and…”
The average normob has been highly, highly frustrated by the exclusivity agreement.
There is, therefore, a substantial amount of pent-up demand from an array normob segments. Indeed, some operator-owned research that I’ve seen has shown a rather staggering amount of 30-50-quid-a-month normobs ready and willing to splash out for the iPhone experience, just as soon as their operator offers it.
“There’s an app for that,” and the fancy iPhone television adverts (that, to my continual amazement, don’t *actually* advertise the iPhone any more — instead, focusing on the available apps) continue to do their job.
Too often has one of these target normobs had to sit in the pub whilst the joker-in-the-pack show-off (or, a mobile geek like you and I) has got out their iPint app and, after a sufficient amount of preening to build demand and bolster the ego, tipped it back to their mouth in a drinking motion, educating and enlightening the baying masses clutching their — let’s be honest — bollocks handsets.
Orange have announced that they will, in due course, bring the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to their customers, later this year.
There is no information on pricing, tariffs and availability as yet.
But there is a pre-registration site for customers wanting to be amongst the first to own an official UK Orange iPhone.
(The Orange Group, of course, aren’t new to iPhone. This latest announcement takes them to a total of 28 countries in which they offer the iPhone!)
Last night the rain was, as the phrase goes, ‘coming down in buckets’.
While most sensible folk were staying inside or heading home, I was doing the opposite, trudging along Millbank to get to Altitude on the 29th floor of the Millbank Tower.
This was for the Orange/Motorola Motoblur & DEXT event. I arrived to find the pre-launch in full swing. I dodged out the way of Leila from TelecomTV was recording a spot to (their very big) camera and spotted SlashGear’s Chris Davies sat in the corner with a glass of champagne, waiting for the magic to begin.
As I walked over to see Chris I was offered a glass of champagne by a waiter. No, actually, I think it was a flute. A flute of champagne. Not a glass.
It’s not all bad, these press launches.
As we waited for the ‘launch’ bit to begin, Chris and I compared notes. He was first in line for the Motorola StarTac handset when it came out, years ago. Me too. I remember it costing 550 pounds. Likewise with the first generation RAZR, we were there. So both Motorola fans back in the day, but to confess to even thinking about using a Motorola as your primary communications device in this day and age is a sure way of getting yourself carted off to the looney bin by the Mobile Industry Review Phone Police.
It’s not that Motorola devices aren’t cool. It’s the fact that you can do almost nothing with a bog standard MOTO-something device. And the user interface… uggggghhhhhhh. Total bollocks.
Recent Windows Mobile Motorola devices have been utter shit, too. I stupidly bought a Motorola Q9C using Windows Mobile. Very stupid. I did a video demonstrating just how pants the experience was. The software routinely disconnected itself from the hardware. I’m not sure who to blame as I’m no fan of Windows Mobile when it’s playing up. But the device was manufactured by Moto.
So I have been deeply unimpressed with Motorola for some time.
But I’ve been looking forward to seeing the next generation. They’ve obviously taken a step back and refocused — and putting Android at the heart of their new operation is a super move. This becomes apparent when you watch Motorola people demonstrating their new devices. Because their default answer is now ‘yes’ — they don’t have to worry about the small but important stuff that users care about. Service augmentation is now left to the burgeoning market of Android developers.
Right then. To the Motorola DEXT (or the ‘CLIQ’ as it’s known in the States).
I had hands-on last night and I’m impressed. I liked the solid build. The QWERTY keyboard is good — I think that with a bit of acclimatisation I could get very fast with it. It’s a heck of a lot better than HTC’s T-Mobile G1 keyboard that has that great big lump or ‘lip’ on the left. The 5 megapixel autofocus camera is very encouraging — although I didn’t get the opportunity to properly try it out. I’m working on the (slightly incorrect but more or less reliable) method of assuming that, in the case of the DEXT, 5 megapixels is better than the equivalent 3.2 megapixels you’d ordinarily find on such a device.
But you know what, you don’t want to know the rest of the specifications, do you? Not even the Orange Newsroom post bothers to tell you the exact specifics. Because it doesn’t really matter any more. It’s getting very, very to distinguish between devices. A few years ago it was critical to weigh the advantages and disadvantages between devices very carefully. Just like it was when you were buying a laptop or PC years ago. I can see we’re getting to the point that it almost doesn’t matter *what* QWERTY Android handset you buy.
It will probably be quad-band. Probably have a half decent camera. Probably have a decent touchscreen, battery, form factor…
Which is why Motorola have decided to distinguish themselves — like HTC — with a user interface layer of sorts. Whilst HTC have their gorgeous ‘Sense’ layer sitting on top of the familiar Android UI, Motorola have MOTOBLUR.
And MOTOBLUR is actually pretty sexy. As the chap took me through the demonstration (the video is below) I got more and more impressed. I could see myself using it heavily.
MOTOBLUR does away with individual apps (like the address book — although the default Android one is still available as you’d expect) and instead delivers a unified ’social media address book’. Here’s the explanation:
MOTOBLUR keeps track of all your contacts so it’s easy to keep up. Contacts are automatically synced to the phone from personal and work email as well as social network accounts, and MOTOBLUR updates any changes friends or contacts make to their info so you don’t have to. When making or receiving a phone call, friend’s latest profile picture and status is shown on the screen. In contacts view, see your communication history with each person and their latest social network broadcasts organized in an easy to read manner so you’ll always know that latest info about friends and family. Plus, communicate with them anyway you like, all right from their contact information.
I really like this. I’ll need to check it out and see how it performs.
Through a series of widgets on the home screen(s) you can use the access the following MOTOBLUR features:
* Happenings: View all your social site updates in one spot with the live Happenings application. Every friend feed, status update, wall post, bulletin and photo upload is automatically delivered and ready for immediate reply, anyway you like
* Messages: Quickly scroll through the Messages application for a snapshot of current work or personal emails, social site messages, and texts, with the ability to respond to any message however you want no matter how it was sent: text, email, IM and more.
* Social Status: Blast your status right from the home screen and even save time by updating your status to one or all your social networks at once
* News Feeds: Keep track of your favorite news feeds, sports scores or even celeb gossip without leaving the homescreen
* Calendar: Integrate work calendar with GCalendar into one widget that shows the next appointment right from the home screen
Again, this is becoming very, very compelling.
I’m particularly impressed with this backup offering:
MOTOBLUR is easy to set up and secure, so there is no need to worry about misplacing the phone. All contacts, log-in information, home screen customizations, email and social network messages are backed-up on the MOTOBLUR secure server. Lost or stolen phones can be found with integrated GPS from the online owner’s portal, and data can even be wiped clean. Users can simply enter the account username and password on their next MOTOBLUR phone, and all the information will be ready and waiting.
Really, really cool. I like this A LOT. It’s a total arse when you swap, change or lose your device because the familiarity that you’ve built up over months (or sometimes years) is lost in an instant. All of a sudden you have to try and find the inbox icon or add in a favourite bookmark again. Even if you’re using an Android device from another manufacturer — which has some of the best synchronisation on the planet for contacts, calendar and email — you don’t get your home screen customisations backed up, ready to access at a moment’s notice.
The remote locate and wipe functions are smart — I like the fact that these kind of offerings were previously reserved for the very top of the range devices. But Motorola has made it available for the masses.
And I think the masses will like it. The DEXT is free on contract. It’s a 24-month contract, mind. That’ll get a few consumers panicking briefly before agreeing. At £34.26 per month, you’ll get 900 any network minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data. Plus Orange Maps (sat nav style) are included too.
The masses — the Facebook masses — are going to love it. There are legions of Orange UK customers out there who have, for too long, been subjected to a poor range of rubbishy phones. Orange is most definitely ‘back’ with this offering — and so is Motorola.
I’m excited to see how consumers react. I think the time is right. I’m picturing a 26 year old female office worker who’s been paying 35 quid a month to Orange for years. She walks into the Orange shop on the hunt for something that will ‘let her do Facebook’. She’s heard of the iPhone but she’s been indoctrinated with the ‘only available on o2′ line and doesn’t want to swap. She doesn’t want to spend any cash on the device up front and is looking for a deal from Orange. She’s heard of Google and would like to do more ‘internetty’ things on her phone. Yup. I reckon she’s going to love the DEXT.
I’ve got two videos for you.
The first is the one I took yesterday evening at the Orange/Motorola event. It’s quite noisy but you will see some of the MOTOBLUR features in use:
The BBC are reporting the rumoured merger between Deutsche Telekom’s UK mobile unit T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange is on – with the two companies planning to create a ’super-operator’ by November.
The new combined unit would bring in around £8.2bn worth of sales, and hoover up 37% of the UK market – more than O2’s current lead at 27%. Costs associated with the merger could reach £800m though, but savings are expected to be £445m by 2014.
All of this is, of course, subject to regulatory approval. However, it does leave lots of unanswered questions – for instance what happens with existing joint ventures like T-Mobile’s MVNO with Virgin, and their 3G network sharing deal with 3? Plus there’s the big dark cloud over jobs – how many redundancies will such a merger cause?
Just in: Reuters is reporting T-Mobile UK and Orange are set to announce they are in exclusive talks to form a joint venture.
Whilst neither party will comment on the report, sources close to both companies said an official announcement could happen as early as tomorrow (Tuesday).
Reports over the weekend in the UK Sunday newspapers claimed Vodafone and O2’s parent company Telefonica had already submitted bids of £3.5bn for Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK business unit.
A combination of O2 and T-Mobile would bring around a 42% market share in the UK, Vodafone and T-Mobile 40%, whilst a joint venture with Orange could grab 37% of the market.
