27 April 2003

Analysis: Virgin Mobile USA - Not dying a virgin VMUSA has 500,000 customers after 9 months, mostly young pre-pay, mostly due to offering good customer service, good value and understandable tariffs and products: Virgin UK and USA are not where they are today because of brand. They have achieved such phenomenal success by focusing on giving customers what they want today; voice, ringtones, messaging and all they have ever asked for during the last 10 years of the mobile industry; decent customer service, and value for money [...] So the brand means nothing? No. The brand is key to successful organisation, but only when it actually means something to the customer. Ask any of Virgins customers, or even anyone in the UK what Virgin’s brand actually means, and they will all tell you a very similar story based on customer service, value, simplicity and services and tariffs they actually understand, moreover services they know how to use and need. Ask even industry observers what any of the operators’ brands actually mean, or how one brand is different from the other, and they will be stumped. 1:39:58 PM     comments

Vodafone sees user experience as the battlefield, Microsoft as the competition Microsoft is our main competitor as much of the strategic position will be in controlling the user experience more than the network. Under this point of view we see a serious danger as we could be marginalised as ISPs have been. Judging from the experience of using Vodafone Live! over GPRS, there is much work to be done. 1:39:03 PM     comments