Virgin Mobile goes for low budget smartphone users

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 01 July 2010 15:20

Your IT - Mobility

Virgin Mobile has introduced a range of postpaid capped plans with generous data allowances designed to cater of the growing numbers of smartphones in the hands of low budget users, and is offering a range of new smart phones with low priced plans.

Virgin Mobile Smart Caps start at $29 per month with 1GB of data, unlimited standard text to any network in Australia, plus $50 credit for everything else.

From this starting point the options are finely graded. Prices rise in increments of $10 per month to $69, then $20 per month to $109 with data volumes rising by $0.5GB for each increment. Credit for other services is $160 at $39; $270 at $49; $380 at $59; $450 at $69, $650 at $89 and $1000 at $109.

However the actual call cost information was harder to come by. The price, $0.99 per minute, was not included in Virgin Mobile's press release and Virgin Mobile's marketing director, delivering the announcement, was not personally able to provide this information.

On all plans Virgin-to-Virgin calls are free, as is voicemail retrieval. Unused call and data credit can be rolled over into the following month.

Introducing the plans, Hearne said: "Our core audience is in their mid 20s, and very social. Texting and the mobile Internet are really important, and we are seeing voice calls drop off as people communicate more and more through text and data."

He added that the high data allowances on the new plans had been offset by reduced credit for calls, in comparison to earlier plans.

"Smartphones now have a real kick-on and we don't see these as being for the elite. There is a whole range of smartphones coming onto the market that are much lower down the price range.

"Our mission is to focus on that $29 [per month] price point and to give customers access to smartphones at that price point. For the first time at Virgin Mobile we will have a full range of smartphones available."

(This price point is becoming the focus of VHA also. It announced yesterday a revamp of its postpaid plans offering free unlimited standard voice calls to both Vodafone and 3 numbers for customers of the respective brands, and  $180 worth of other calls.)

The plans are offered with a range of new handsets: The Samsung Galaxy S (Android) at $15 per month; The Samsung Wave (bada) at $5 per month and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 ($20) X10 mini pro ($5) and Vivaz Pro ($5). Credit on all plans is increased for those who choose to bring their own handset. All these prices are on the $29 plan.