Vodafone aims for mass market push

September 22, 2005 - source: BWCS

UK mobile operator Vodafone appears determined to up the ante in the 3G market this Christmas. The Newbury-based giant has announced plans to market no fewer than 15 new 3G handsets in the run up to this year's festive season, in an attempt to boost mass-market take up of 3G services.

Ten of the new terminals will be sold exclusively by Vodafone and six will be aimed at entry level customers. Repeating a now traditional refrain in the mobile industry Vodafone's chief marketing officer Peter Bamford declared "We are confident that this is going to be a 3G Christmas."

Six of the new handsets will be aimed at the "premium market" - four of these high-end models will be supplied by Sharp and two by Toshiba. Meanwhile, the lower end will of the market be catered for by new phones from Sharp (two), Samsung (two) and one each from Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Among the general handsets which will not be exclusive to the global operator will be Samsung's SGH-Z500V and SGH-Z140V phones, Motorola RAZR V3x and the Nokia N70 and 6280.

The operator stressed that all of its new next generation mobiles will offer new services including full-track music downloads mobile TV and a growing range of video content. The company is sticking to its forecast of 10 million 3G customers by March of next year. To reach those levels, however, Christmas will have to be very kind to Vodafone: in July of this year the company reported only 3.3million 3G customers.