3GNewsroom.com Weekly Round Up and Comments
David Yuen - December 23, 2002
Our round up and comments of the past week's main stories from
our editor.
******** THIS WEEK ********
- 3G targets business consumers
- EU official negative on 3G take-up while Asia fires ahead
- Japan out in full force on 3G launch
- Hutchison Poll - Expect low take-up on 3G
- Report shows how to launch 3G successfully
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>>> 3G targets business consumers
Singapore Telecommunications is expected to offer 3G mobile phone
services to consumers in business districts next year.
"It'll be areas like the business districts whereby business
customers would be able to use it for things like video conferencing
or enterprises that have data type transactions that can leverage
the technology," said Andrew Buay, vice president of consumer
marketing at SingTel.
SingTel says it may take another two to three years before many
consumers in the country sign up to the new service.
It makes you wonder whether 3G is for businesses or high street
consumers. Releasing 3G services first to corporate users has also
been the case for Telstra of Australia. The high prices that European
operators are proposing has priced out the average mobile users.
Therefore targeting businesses is most probably the better option
from a pricing point of view. Andrew Buay is right, business customers
would most benefit and appreciative of the new technology. They
would be able to justify the use of higher data speeds.
But would it be ideal to target new 3G service at businesses? Businesses
are fussy customers. They paid good money for the service and expect
no faults from it. So, it is dangerous to release an unproven network
to business customers.
Consumers, although still fussy, has more tolerance with a lower
quality in the service. A lack of coverage or even one or two dropped
calls would hardly cause consumers to switch to a different operator.
They are prepared to accept some defaults in favour of cheaper calls.
-- 3G to make debut in limited areas
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/techscience/story/0,4386,161594,00.html
>>> EU official negative on 3G take-up while Asia fires
ahead
Erkki Liikanen, EU telecoms official, said a boom in 3G mobile
phone sales is unlikely before 2008, in an interview with Focus
magazine.
Mr Liikanen said. "We will have to wait at least five more
years for a real boom in UMTS."
But Taiwanese mobile phone operator Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless
Communications has a different view. It aims to launch 3G services
by April next year and believes its 3G business will be profitable
in its first year of operation. It expects to have 800,000 3G subscribers
in the first year and hopes that the ARPU will reach NT$1,000.
European operators have taken a rather pessimistic view while Far
East Asia has a rosier outlook. J-Phone expects to have one million
subscribers by March 2004 with 20% from business customers. Certainly
Asia receives new technologies with open arms and it helps with
3G uptake. Demand for 3G in Europe is uncertain, adding to operators'
more cautious approach to rollout. The biggest selling point of
3G is the higher data speed which then enables new applications.
But Europe has not a culture for mobile data and so makes it difficult
to sell to consumers when the service is expected to be expensive.
Europe is still more concerned with peer to peer communication rather
than Internet access.
-- EU phone chief warns on 3G delay
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2579307.stm
-- Taiwanese 3G carrier is confident its CDMA model will be a success
http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=story&articleId=NEa1216026.2iw
&verticalID=148&vertical=Industry+Trends
>>> Japan out in full force on 3G launch
J-Phone on Friday finally launched its long awaited W-CDMA 3G service
in Japan. The operator has approximately 70% population coverage
in Japan. Three videophone handsets have been lined up by J-Phone,
who is targeting Japanese travelling abroad with its dual mode W-CDMA/GSM
handsets. The Vodafone group will use J-Phone as a test bed to finely
tune its networks and services in Europe and elsewhere.
The launch means all three 3G license holders in Japan have fully
commercialised services, of which two are W-CDMA network (NTT DoCoMo
and J-Phone) and the other is CDMA2000 (KDDI). Contrast this with
Europe which none of the major operators have commercial 3G services.
J-Phone's handsets were "almost all sold out" by Saturday
said spokesman Arata Kurihara, but declined to specify the number
of handsets shipped.
>>> Hutchison Poll - Expect low take-up on 3G
In our poll, 61% of voters said they would not sign up with Hutchison
UK's 3G mobile service. Considering the monthly tariff prices at
a minimum of £59.99, it is not surprising that many voters
said no. It made the choice of deciding whether the tariffs are
worth the money more difficult since Hutchison did not disclose
details on the monthly allowance for each tariff.
Hutchison's "hush hush" tactics on its price plans make
you wonder whether they have finalised their tariffs. They should
never have released its prices without details to go with it, which
gives the impression that they have not thoroughly thought out the
price plans. J-Phone for example has listed full detail of its tariffs
and call charges when they announced their launch date.
The cheapest price for Hutchison's handsets is £399 (US$617)
compared with the V-N701 from J-Phone selling at approximately US$287.
How comes J-Phone can sell their handsets at half the price of Hutchison's
handsets?
>>> Report shows how to launch 3G successfully
A report by Steve Jones of the3gportal.com examines the issue that
can make or break the 3G industry. Titled "3G Launch Strategies:
Early Adopters - How & Why to Make Them Yours", the 160
page report discuss the importance of targeting the Early Adopters
as a specific segment rather than the mass market since it will
not exist for some time in the future. You can buy the report from:
http://www.the3gportal.com/3greport/3gnewsroom/
****************************
All comments and suggestions are welcome. Please send them to davidyuen@3gnewsroom.com
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