Just 2-3 observations in line with my previous comments on Vodafone's recent announcement or with Singtel's announcement (the operator is to sell the iPhone in 4 Asian countries: Singapore, Philippines, Australia and India).

- No details are given in the PR but it is now clear that Apple is now embracing a more flexible approach with agreements that are not necessarily exclusive (TIM and Vodafone distribute the iPhone in Italy; T-Mobile and Orange in Austria, Singtel and Vodafone in India...). The CFO of France Telecom however recently confirmed that Orange's France exclusive agreement will still last another 2 years and an half.

- Spain is the only major European country missing. Another confirmation that a deal with Telefonica is likely to be announced

On a related topic and from an advertising perspective, here are some interesting stats from AdMob monthly stats. No doubt the sur-representation in the "other" category for iPhone's worldwide traffic was a good indication of the grey market in countries where the iPhone had not been launched officially.

Now that the geographical expansion is being completed, let's wait for innovation. See my colleague Ian Fogg's take here.

Brought to my attention via MobHappy, an interesting blog from Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino. Russell (in charge of European operations at Admob) has just been elected Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association for EMEA (in replacement of Richard Saggers from Vodafone). Congrats and good luck to him.

There are obvioulsy plenty of factors to take into account but what strikes me here is that both Tesco and Virgin are MVNOs respectively on 02 and T-Mobile networks!

On a different but related topic, radio network NRJ is finally selling its stake in NRJ mobile to the other co-founder Credit Mutuel. It will be very interesting to see how the bank (with more than 5,000 points of sales) will use the brand license to adress the youth market and develop its long term strategy (NFC, mobile banking,...).

Interesting to point out that Spain is not included in this announcement, probably meaning Apple will find another partner (Telefonica?) for this country. Benelux and Scandinavia are also still missing to the European iPhone equation but they represent limited volumes.

Indeed, later this year, Vodafone customers will also be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network in 6 other countries around the globe (Australia, Egypt, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey).

At this stage, Vodafone is not announcing any further details at present. Which version of the iPhone will it be? Will Vodafone subsidize it (not very common practice in the Southern European prepay countries)? When? Is this an exclusive agreement with Apple?

There are lots of unanswered questions. Since the announcement of the launch a year and a half ago (in January 07), I am still wondering how Apple can really disrupt the market without embracing one way or another the mobile ecosystem.

No doubt such an agreement will help boosting sales and reaching the 10M objective at the end of 2008. Jupiter has already pointed out reasons why Iphone did not perform well in the more competitive and fragmented European market. Some operators (T-mobile, o2) have recently slashed prices (99 euros only with T-Mobile...but with a 99 euros monthly contract and a lock-in period of 2 years). This is also part of the natural life cycle of a product and an indication that new prodcuts may follow sooner than later. Let's just hope that the long-awaited 3G version will be HSPA. Anyway, it must be, otherwise the competitive advantage over EDGE would be too limited and Apple would be lagging behind competitors.

It reminds me of DVB-H just in time for the Football World cup. What happened in 2 years' time?

Well, to the great surprise of operators, the DVB-H license was not attributed to them but to another consortium of mobile 3.0: Neva Media (mainly owned by media companies Burda and Holtzbrinck) and MFD (Mobile Fernsehen Deutschland).

T-Mobile may well follow Vodafone, making it even for complex to monetize the DVB-H license. In my opinion there are lots of unsolved business model issues in both cases.

Using a combination of DVB-T (leveraging an existing ecosystem) and MBMS (moving forward) is an alternative contemplated by other players. However, DVB-H promoters are still adamant that DVB-T is by definition not optimized for mobile phones (impact on battery life, antenna, coverage, not an IP-based solution...). Which is by the way the very precise reason why DVB-H was created!!

Sverige är ett Sony Ericsson-land och i april lade den svensk-japanska mobiltillverkaren beslag på inte mindra än sju av platserna på mobiloperatören 3s försäljningslista.

Som vanligt kan inget hota mobilt bredband på förstaplatsen. Resten av listan domineras dock stort av Sony Ericsson som dessutom bidrar med tre nykomlingar för april. Smidiga lilla K530i gör en comeback genom att gå in på tredje plats, den bruna versionen av bästsäljande nykomlingen W890i är ny femma och svarta varianten av favoriten K770i är ny sjua. På listans åttonde plats finns 3s egen Skypephone och vinterns storsäljare Nokia N95 8 GB ligger trygg på fjärde.

1. (1), 3 USB Modem Turbo 3G
2. (2), Sony Ericsson W890i 8 GB Silver
3. (ny), Sony Ericsson K530i Silver
4. (3), Nokia N95 8 GB Black
5. (ny), Sony Ericsson W890 8 GB Brown
6. (6). Sony Ericsson K770i Purple
7. (ny). Sony Ericsson K770i Black
8. (4), 3Skypephone
9. (5), Sony Ericsson W660i Black
10. (7). Sony Ericsson K770i Brown

Den här topplistan visar försäljningen under den gångna månaden via 3s website, telesales, 40-talet egna 3butiker och närmare 1000 återförsäljare över hela landet. Siffran inom parentes är föregående månads placering

I was intrigued in 2007 by some stats from Telia reporting that for several months in a raw modems / USB Sim cards were the top-selling units in Telia 76 Swedish shops.

So I decided to spend some time in Telia shops but also in competitors' high street shops and in independent retailers outlets.

Well, merchandizing usually tells you a lot. There were really "dongles" everywhere, promoted at every corner. They cost roughly nothing provided you pay 200 Swedish Kronen (around 21 euros) per month during a year.

It is an easy sell. Most consumers decide based on a mix of coverage and price according to the vendors I spoke to.

Operators accross Europe (see the pic from the Voda billboard below) are promoting dongles but it seems that Austria and Sweden are ahead, probably because they have a dynamic 3G market with a good coverage. Another interesting reason is that Swedes (but also Finns, see here) have one of the highest rates of second houses / summer houses in Europe. Why paying a full Internet package when you just need to bring your laptop? Ah working from home in a nice Nordic island...

The ad-funded MVNO has announced it will launch in the Netherlands (sometime in S2 2008) and is willing to expand in other European countries.

It is an interesting concept. The company will have to adress 3 main issues moving forward:

- widening the installed base so that advertisers and marketers benefit from a larger reach

- making sure ads are perceived as information/entertainement so that the growing number of youth attracted by the offer will continue to engage with brand messages

- find a profitable business models in countries where market conditions are not ideal for MVNOs. In this regard, bear in mind Blyk is not a totally free offer. Customers get 43 minutes and 217 texts every month for free and have to pay a fee when they reach this ceiling or when they use other services. This is also part of complex modelling of their profitability approach.

As in 06 with the German World cup, the idea is to leverage a sport event as a marketing catalyst to educate customers on new services. It worked pretty well for 3 Italy who managed to acquire 250,000 subcribers in the 1st 5 months (most of them during the 5 first weeks of the Worldcup...won by Italy) out of an initial objective of 500,000. At the end of October 07, 3 had reached 750,000 activations. Not all of them pay a fee on a monthly basis though. That being said, 3 Italy is always presented as the successful case study for DVB-H in Europe. It is true usage patterns are quite high for the circa 10% of the installed base who has used the service.

Many other European countries have postponed their DVB-H launches, so it is good news that Swisscom is now officially launching on May 13. As for Vodafone and TIM in Italy, the offer will launch with a very limited range of products: only the Nokia N77! However, the device is heavily subsidized (CHF 1 if 2 years lock-in period on a 25 CHF monthly contract). Samsung SGH-P60 and then N96 (Nokia's new flagship device is supposed to ship in q3 2008 at 550 euros befores taxes and subsidies) will follow. However the DVB-H coverage is pretty ok (44% of the Swiss population according to Swisscom). For the moment, the other Swiss operators are not joining board and are not ready to pay Swisscom Broadcast who owns the Swiss DVB-H license...

Beyond Italy, there are plenty of references to the success of mobile TV in South Korea. When you digg into it, this is far from being crystal clear. None of the 2 business models there have proved to be successful yet:

- S-DMB (paying satellite solution from TU Media) has reached more than 1.25M cutomers mid 07 but losses are huge around 200M euros

- T-DMB (free terrestrial solution) has reached more than 7.5M customers (with only a big third of them on mobile phones) but advertising revenues on which the offer is based, had generated less than 2M $ in S1 2007.

There are many many other issues to be ironed out for mobile broadcasting TV to really take off. First of all, it should not really be opposed to unicast / VOD solutions as is often the case. Jupiter will soon publish a new survey on this topic so please get in touch if you want to participate or watch the space.

The mayor of Graz city in Austria is ordering commuters to keep their cellphones in silent mode while riding the citys public transport.

So, just imagine what a transatlantic flight would be if your neighbour was chatting all the time!

Indeed, there have been recent discussions about the opportunity to introduce voice calls in planes. At the end of day, consumers will decide. And they will probably go only for the data / sms connectivity.

Or will we see dedicated areas (such as smoking areas) for people urgently needing to make a phone call? Well, That's already a reality in trains between 2 compartments.

Isn't just a question of savoir-vivre? or do you need to pass a law?

Welcome to societal impacts of mobile phones - part 27...