Author Archive: Gareth

Virgin Mobile customer base increases

Virgin Media increased its mobile customer base by 45 per cent in the first quarter of the year compared with the first quarter of 2009. It now has 1,030,900 subscribers with 81,200 net contract additions in the quarter, up 29 per cent. ARPU during the period was up 4.3 per cent to £13.70, while revenue dipped by 2.5 per cent year-on-year to £131.9 million.

The decline in revenues reflected a reduction in prepay mobile subscribers and the lower mobile termination rates which was introduced in April. Its net disconnections in the quarter for prepay was 196,100, which reflected its decision not to focus on prepay customers due to higher churn and lower overall lifetime value, it claimed.

Meanwhile, Virgin Media’s cable business also grew during the period with 41,700 new customers. ARPU also increased by 5.3 per cent to £45.01. Churn for its cable operations was at a record low of 1.1 per cent.

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett said: "This quarter, we added cable customers at our fastest ever rate. A combination of higher gross additions, low churn and increased ARPU enabled us to deliver year-on-year cable revenue growth for the fourth consecutive quarter.

"We are developing our services to exploit our natural network advantage, both now and in the future. More customers than ever before are choosing faster broadband and every day millions of our customers are enjoying the benefits of the video-on-demand revolution we are leading.

"Finally, we have completed the last step of the refinancing of our debt, leaving us with a long term ‘fit for purpose’ capital structure that supports our ambitions to lead the market as the digital provider of choice."

Palm Pre sales are rubbish

Palm Pre sales have been a disaster, claim staff in O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores. This follows news that Palm is to be put up for sale. Many stores have registering zero sales.
An O2 spokesperson said: “Palm Pre sales are in line with our expectations.”

But one store manager said “Our store has sold hardly any Palm Pres, It never stood a chance against the iPhone and they both advertise themselves as doing the same things”.

A Carphone staffer added: “It is a good device but it doesn’t really have a place in the market. No one knows who Palm is.  So Nokia, Sony Ericsson and the iPhone will always be preferred.”

The Pre is available exclusively on O2 contracts. It was also launched on a premium £35 per month tariff but has since become free on all tariffs to “shift stock” staff claim. According to O2 forums, sales were so low many smaller stores stopped selling the Pre. Other shop staff have reported software and hardware issues including freezing, poor battery life, and faults with its slide track.

Skyfire Launches the First Flash Video Enabled Mobile Browser for Android

The first ‘mobile browser for the Social Media generation’ eliminates
broken links from your Facebook stream, tracks Twitter buzz, and makes
sharing easy

Vodafone’s Nexus One out of stock already?

The Nexus One isn’t exactly the biggest hit of the year, but then again I don’t think it was planned to be. Google’s little phone was due to hit Vodafone and Verizon with the latter pulling out just as folks were getting excited.

For consumers in the UK everything was rosy until pre-orders started coming back with this message:

“Thank you for placing your order, reference number [redacted]. Unfortunately we have suffered a surprisingly high demand for the Nexus One From Google, which means that it is unexpectedly out of stock. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused. We hope to have further stock available within 7-10 working days and will contact you again once your order has been dispatched.”Vodafone Customer Care

I wonder just how high a surprisingly high demand is? Or perhaps Vodafone are trying to generate a little buzz for a “must have” device. Or perhaps Google are cutting their looses and only manufacturing a limited batches. Only time will tell.

Windows Phone 7 shows off Office

One thing that the competition will have a tough time topping is Office integration. Microsoft has put out a couple of rather nice videos showing you just how easy it is to work from your phone. The interface seems to lend itself very well to the office environment. Check after the break for the videos:

Kins get specced

Gdgt have listed an almost complete spec list for both the Kin1 and Kin2. The specs are quite high for the SideKick market that they are more than likely to be targeted at, well the inclusion of Exchange might jostle that idea. They should prove to be terrific phones for a pre-iPhone/Android era. Had they hit the street some time ago, even last year when the pictures first emerged they probably would have been raved about.

No pricing as yet but this will play the most instrumental if they devices are to have any degree of success. We would expect to see pricing before the end of the week.

[Gdgt Kin 1, Kin 2]

No Google Maps Navigation for iPhone users

Google recently announced that their free turn-by-turn navigation on Google Maps will become available on other platforms aside from Android, and since that the iPhone already has Google Maps on-board, one would think that it will also be released on Apple’s dear little mobile phone. That’s what we thought too, but unfortunately, it won’t be happening. Google has gone on the record and stated that Google Maps Navigation will not be available on the iPhone in response to rumors that it has been confirmed for release on Apple’s top-selling device. Is this the first sign of Google’s desire to end support for the iPhone?

Only time will tell, but as far as the here and now is concerned, it’s confirmed that there won’t be free Google Maps Navigation available for iPhone users across the globe.

[Source]

Vodafone Nexus One coming soon?

Vodafone updated their Nexus One page, now showing under the “Coming Soon” tag that “soon” will be April. Interesting, considering April is a little over a week from coming to a close. Does this mean the handset will be available to those waiting for its release in a matter of days? Or could this be a case of simple error.

Dell Lightning slider features Windows Phone 7

Most, if not all, of the current Dell mobile phone run on Android, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be offering one that’ll have a different OS as an alternative to non-Android aficionados. In fact, this leaked Dell Lightning touchscreen QWERTY slider just proves that they’ve got a Windows Phone 7lined up for this year for interested consumers.

The Dell Lightning packs a large 4.1-inch WVGA OLED display (slightly larger than the one found on the XPERIA X10), 5-mp AF camera, 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor, GPS, 512MB RAM, 1GB flash ROM, and an 8GB microSD card. ETA for the AT&T and T-Mobile 3G compatible Dell Lightning is in Q4 of this year with an LTE variant possibly hitting the scene a year later in Q4 2011.