Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 05 December 2008 14:41
IT Industry -
Market
Page 2 of 4
Strand Consult continues:
”3. How many customers have been overlooked by operators focusing on the iPhone?
“Could some of those customers that are not interested in an iPhone feel more welcome with operators that do not carry the iPhone and is not it likely that focusing on a niche product will result in neglecting customers that are the actual foundation of an operator's existence?
“All questions that the industry should seriously contemplate.”
“4. Many operators have emphasised the data consumption volume among iPhone customers, but comparing an iPhone customer’s data consumption with the rest of their customer base is sad.
“We believe that most of the iPhone customers were already data customers before purchasing their iPhone, so the actual educational effect of the iPhone is minimal. Perhaps operators should take a closer look at these customers voice ARPU rather than their data consumption?”
“5. Having iPhone customers using large data volumes sounds good, but when data is being sold at a flat rate, a high data consumption results in high production costs without the corresponding increased revenue.
“You could compare the operators’ attitude towards the iPhone's data consumption with a restaurant owner that has a "all you can eat for 10 Euro” buffet and that is proudest of the customers that eat the most!
“In this business the idea is to generate revenue for the shareholders, not to increase the production volume and costs, while at the same time minimising revenue.”
“6. When you examine the iPhone data consumption, you will see that iPhone customers use their browser to view ordinary websites and that they often choose not to view the websites in XHTML - optimised for low bandwidth and mobile phone sized screens.
“In practice this results in that when an iPhone user browses a typical news site, an ordinary web page will be around 1 MB, while the mobile version of the same page will often be less than 100 Kb.
“It is significantly cheaper for an operator to produce 100 Kb data than it is to produce 1 MB data and it is much more fun to deliver 100 KB rather than 1 MB when you are selling data at a flat rate.”
Strand Consult’s views on the iPhone continue on page 3, please read on.
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