BPN 1126 Will the Apple magic work in Europe with iPhone 3G?

On July 11, 2008 the Apple magic will have to work in Europe. On that date Apple introduces the iPhone 3G in Europe. AS sales strategy it has selected two European telecom operators, T-Telecom and Orange, to take care of the introduction. Question is: will the iPhone 3G become a runaway success. Can this version of iPhone seduce the European user? Where can they get them? Is the price okay? Or will the sales people of T-Mobile and Orange have to go to the beach to push their phoneware/wear?

Apple has divided Europe into two parts: the T-Mobile sphere and the Orange sphere. T-Mobile start distributing the iPhone in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands on July 11th and later on this year in Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Orange will launch the iPhone on July 11 Austria, Portugal and Switzerland, in France on July 17 and in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Luxembourg, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Orange's African markets later this year.

The geographical division in Europe is interesting. Mid-Europe and the Mediterranean are have been covered, but it looks like the UK and Ireland will have a separate deal as well as the Scandinavian countries. Although it looks like there is sales exclusivity for the telecom operators in large countries, for countries like Austria, Poland and Slovakia both operators can sport the iPhone. In The Netherlands T-Mobile will sell the iPhone, while incumbent telco KPN also wanted to sell the iPhone, despite the dislike of its boss, Ad Scheepbouwer.

The iPhone has been readied for the European mobile market, which differs drastically from the US market. Orange will use its network which is a combination of widespread EDGE, Wi-Fi, 3G and HSDPA networks. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

As a price 199 US dollar has been set. In present European currency this roughly would mean 120,00 euro. Question is of course, what kind of exchange rate the companies will choose. In some countries also the subsidising principle, driving down the costs of the device might work. The price, being so cheap, might work.

The roll-out will start from July 11 onwards. In Europe this will mean holiday season with Dutch and Germans are going to Spain, the Mediterranean coast of France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Greece in great numbers. Was this day picked purposely, so that the warehouses would not be empty in a day or two?

Will people buy it in Europe. The sale of the first version of the iPhone was not exactly a bomb, to put it mildly. So why should the Europeans fall for it now? Of course the iPhone 3G has been adapted to the European networks. The price has gone down dramatically. But will Apple be able to remove the impression that the first generation was not really super. The telecom operators T-Mobile and Orange will know soon after the roll-out. In the sale is not impressive after a few days, the telecom operators should keep an army of students, clad in telephone wear, at hand to scour and canvas the beaches.

Will I buy it? Not for the time being. I recently bought an HTC. Am I happy with it. No, but I am sick and tired of discovering all the procedures and the ways you have to work around features. Of course Apple will tell me that it has an intuitive interface. For the time being I am not ready for another device, regardless whether I can watch TV on it, listen to radio and music and read newspapers, magazines and movels. By the end of July I will phone up my friends on my HTC and do a survey on whether they have bought an iPhone or are going to buy one.

Update 20080614T-Mobile in The Netherlands expects many iPhone buyers. It says that 40.000 people requested the newsletter about iPhone in one week. The iPhone 3G will not deliver a percentage of the data traffic to Apple but a fixed fee.

Blog Posting Number: 1126

Tags: mobile telephony

BPN 1125 Costly sms texting from abroad

The Dutch telecom watchdog OPTA has started another fight with the telecom companies operating in the Netherlands. The bone of contention is the price of sms texting messages sent from a European country to The Netherlands. This is way too high, the watchdog claims. It calls upon the telecom companies too lower the charges and threatens, that it will go to the European Commission (EC), if they do not conform to the call.

The whole affair reminds of the mobile telephone tariffs contention half a year ago. Having warned the telecom companies to lower their tariffs, the companies did not give in. The EC ordered the tariffs to remain under the ceiling of 58 eurocents per minute. In this way the Dutch saved 77 million euro in half a year. The volume of telephone calls increased with six percent.

The Dutch telecom watchdog is now after sms texting as the Dutch operators such as KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile apparently have raised their tariffs to compensate the lost revenues of the lowered mobile telephone tariffs. The average for and sms texting message to the home country in Europe is 35 eurocents, while the Dutch have to pay 58 eurocents on average for an sms texting message sent home.

Of course the operators deny the rise and use fallacies in order to justify the high tariff. With dry eyes Mr Bram Oudshoorn, spokes person for KPN (still loyal to KPN after all these years), looked into the television camera and explained that the number of Dutch people holidaying in Spain is a lot for Holland and they do send many sms texting messages. But for the Spanish company with which KPN has a bilateral agreement, this is only peanuts. That is why the Dutch pay more than for example Spanish people texting from The Netherlands. A nonsense argument as there are more Dutch holiday makers in Spain, than Spanish people working in The Netherlands or holidaying in the Low lands. He was lucky to find a non-critical journalist (and there are many in the field of technology); for I wonder how he would have explained the tariffs in Estland and Malta being under 20 eurocents for a sms texting message from a European country to Estland. But Mr Oudshoorn announced lower tariffs for summertime (most likely to be raised after that period).

It will be interesting to see whether the EC will interfere and put a ceiling to the tariffs. So the next battle area will be mobile internet. The tariff for this went down from 6,60 euro per 1MB to 5 euro. But this is still a high price. Some operators have started to put a flat fee in effect for consumers. Still the operators think from a production point of view and do not look at the marketing side of mobile internet. Even the basic lessons from history have not been learned. Setting a unit like 1 MB creates a taxi meter, something the veteran information services like Dialog and BRS did. Setting a flat fee creates an open market, new products and new sources of revenues.

Blog Posting Number: 1125

Tags: mobile telephone

BPN 997 Dutch movels come around

In 2000 I expected the third wave of electronic books, the mobile or telecom books. There was a dichotomy going on. On the one hand there was a trend in mobile devices or handies as Germans call them, to produce the smallest and the lightest devices with a small screen; remember the lightweights of the former mobile phone manufacturer Sendo. On the other hand PDAs and mobile telecoms were negotiating a merger into one device with a larger screen. The Nokia Communicator was potentially a mobile book reader. The third wave never came, at least not in Europe and the USA. It did happen in Japan, China and Korea.

But now it looks like things are happening for example in the Netherlands. These days chicklit reading stuff is available as mobile novels, also called movels. Typical girls literature is converted into movels and distributed. Last week Gottmer publishers in Haarlem (The Netherlands) offered its Gossip Girl series as movels to movels.eu, a portal founded by mobile software manufacturer The Saints. Usually the manuscripts have to be adapted for mobile phone, but the Gossip Girl series did not need an adaptation. The leading lady exchanges gossips. The print series started in 2003 and now counts ten volumes, of which three volumes are now available as movels.

The movels are an experiment, a representative of Gottmer Publishers conceded. The publishing house is experimenting with all kind of digital formats such as games. They also thought about audio books, but decided to start with movels as the target group has always its mobile phone with them.

The reader can chooses from three font sizes and can select the background (black or white).The movels cost 4,50 euro each, while the first chapter is for free. The payment is in three instalments of three premium SMS of 1,50 euro each. A publisher or an author will receive 1 euro, exclusive of VAT, when the basic sum of 25 euro is reached. The main part of the rest, 3,50 euro, goes to the telephone operator and the minor part goes to the movel operator. Authors can upload their novel themselves without any interference of a publisher. The uploaded manuscript is converted in almost half an hour. The portal Movels.eu has about twenty movels available now; The Saints expect this number to be raised to eighty by the end of the year. Amongst others the Dutch publisher Lemniscaat hopes to have more than ten movels published this year. The movels are also promoted by the mobile web portal of the mobile operator T-Mobile and by T-Zones; payment is included in the telephone billing statement.

Blog Posting Number: 996

Tags: movel, mobile novels, pdamovel, mobile novel, pda