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READER FEEDBACK
14 Nov 2001 - From Ruth Brännvall, UK:
"hi,
you asked about segmentation in your news letter. From my horizon here in
the UK, this is what I can notice (and besides the ones you already
mentioned):
In general the operators are segmenting mainly with help from price plans.
When it comes to services they most often have long lists of offerings on
one, single portal for everyone, like Vodafone´s offering through Vizzavi or
mmO2´s Genie.
There are a few though who realises that subscribers that bother looking up
services via the internet are pretty mobile savvy and young people are
already used to `have to´ go to the web in order to download ringtones and
icons. So some operators are trying to design a quite young look of their
generic mobile portal or by doing sub-categories withing this generic portal
(i.e. not taking the full step to sub brands).
One of the first one to try, still alive and kickin´, is Telenor with their
djuice portal (www.djuice.no) which has a clear young profile. Launched last
year it has most of the services avaliable on the market.
Another one is, or I guess we should say `was´ now, Telia with Speedy
Tomato. Yes, they have halebop as well but again - that is a generic portal
for all subscribers. SpeedyTomato´s ambition was (may still be in Demark and
Finland, where they still have some operation) to reach a younger market, by
providing personal, cool services.
Sonfon launched their mobile portal in 1999, called Gismo, but shut it down
beginning of this year and keeps the brand name for their SMS information
services.
Their competitor Tele Danmark has a youth portal called dingelink
(www.dingelink.dk), which currently mainly promotes ringtones, icons,
greetings and one sms based game.
That and old dog can learn to sit (if you kick it enough...?) proves
Swisscom as they last year launched to sub brands: EasyKid (www.easykid.ch)
and Skyline (www.natelskyline.ch). The first one is of course towards kids
with simple greetings and games, supposed to give parents "more security"
although they do not explain in their info what that means. Skyline is
targeting people up to 22 years with emphasis on night life, flirting and
other "fun" stuff. BTW, Swisscom also operates a wap portal.
(www.wap-now.ch)
Telefonica Moviles is of course referring to TerraLycos and iobox although
they have a mobile portal called emoción. TerraLycos/Iobox will be
Telefonica´s mobile application provider for all their 3G investments, plus
local providers. So does iobox have a good segmentation? The have two major
product categories: messaging and entertainment, so cleary they are trying
to catch the youngsters too, but in the broadest sense.
The big Italians has chosen a careful way, by doing sub-categories like TIM
Café in their mobile portal (www.i-tim.it). Neither Wind or Omnitel has
specific mobile portals (the latter has Vizzavi with its local partner
Navegalia).
T-Motion released T-Motion Plus in August, not a great example of
segmentation but targeting high-end users by offering a premium package for
5.09 euros per month which includes news, games, greetings and more. A
number of independent portals in Germany are more interesting when looking
at segmentation.
An operator doing better is France Telecom´s Wanadoo that has a clear, young
profile of their mobile category (mobile.wanadoo.fr) Look at their demo for
example.
The last one I can think of is KPN Mobile in the Netherlands who launched
m-info (www.m-info.nl) that provides information channels over SMS and WAP,
but again....to anyone. In my opinion they have a very corporate profile
though.
For other countries, like Portugal, Austria and other that I have not
mentioned, I´m only aware of generic portals targeting the mass market.
I may have missed some, but if you think it´s worth something you are
welcome to spread it.
Ruth
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