Posts Tagged ‘vs’

Microsoft vs Nokia

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Here’s a fascinating comparison between two giants, Microsoft and Nokia.

Nokia holds their press conference at an unmarked chamber of commerce miles from the Mobile World Congress convention centre. They lay on buses. There is next to no Nokia branding anywhere on the building or inside. Further, the venue isn’t in Google Maps at (easily accessible, anyway) and most of the locals had never heard of it.

Microsoft have taken over the Hotel Catalonia, directly opposite the congress centre. Outside the hotel has a flippin’ great ‘Start - Windows’ poster to let you know where you are. Get inside and there are posters every five paces telling you where to go. Simple, easy.

I myself favour the direct approach. Nice one Microsoft. I’m just hoping Microsoft have a decent OS version to demonstrate.

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SpinVox vs HulloMail — they’re not competitors

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

I’ve seen a lot of conversation recently regarding SpinVox and HulloMail (whom we featured yesterday on the MIR Show).

In fact I actually interviewed regular contributor, Barney Craggs, last night at MoMo/Swedish Beers and he commented on this, thinking it was weird that we had James Whatley of SpinVox interviewing Andy Munarriz of HulloMail.

If you wnat your voicemails by text — I do — then SpinVox delivers. If you want to ‘own’ your own voicemails — that is, keep them in one place (e.g. your email) and be able to reference/forward/reply to them easily through your mail client, HulloMail is the way ahead.

I don’t think they’re competitors per se. I think they are offering alternative services — and that you’re very much one or the other.

However increasingly I’m finding that I’d like both.

I’d like to keep my voicemails in my inbox — AND get them immediately transcribed and delivered to my handset’s SMS inbox. I wonder if there’s a way for them to do business together?

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UK Prepay vs Contract: A complete joke!

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

The pre-pay (pay as you go) in the UK is an absolute joke, I have been looking at what is on offer and it really flocked me off. I checked my email today and in it was a weekly email from Martin Lewis (of Money Saving Expert), and it was details about the cheapest pre-pay provider here in the UK. As the podcast team reported a few weeks ago from the 1st of September ASDA are the cheapest provider at (8p per minute and SMS at 4p).

My rant comes in two parts: -

1. Why can MVNO’s such as ASDA and IKEA (the second cheapest provider) provide such good call value, yet their host networks Vodafone and T-Mobile are able to put UP prices a few months ago to 20p a minute? I know that the MVNO’s must be putting the price close to the wholesale price as the possibly can to get market penetration, however your average ‘normob’ is losing out. The other thing is that out of contract my call price is 20p; however Ewan can vouch that on Vodafone it can be up to 35p. It infuriates me that as contract customers we are being charged up to over 4 times the rate as a prepay customer on a MVNO on the same network.

2. It is actually cheaper to ring Poland, USA, China or Australia on Lebara (who uses Vodafone) at 4p per minute then it is to ring my next door neighbour at 10p per minute on Lebara. I know the ethnic MVNO’s use VOIP for the international bit of the call, however I think it is ridiculous that is cheaper to ring the other side of the world then it is to someone in the same country.

It’s not all negative there is a real hope that there will be a price war (hopefully the traditional MNO will be forced to join in) now that the cheapest pre-pay providers are the virtual networks.

Hopefully those of us on contract will not be left out as well. (Well I can dream can’t I?)

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