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 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.
Yes you did read the header correctly. I have been told today that the UK will only be getting the Blackberry Pearl 3G 9105.
That’s the one with the T9 keyboard. Why this decision has been made kind of baffles me but that’s the way it is. If RIM were only to supply one of them here in the UK then I do think they have made the right choice in terms of which of the ‘Pearls’ it is. I quite often speak with people who say they are so used to typing with there feature phone they couldn’t handle using a full QWERTY keyboard. So, in my opinion, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9105 will enable those users to make the transition over to a BlackBerry without making the change complicated.
As the 9105 is packed with the same high end features as on other bigger BlackBerry devices, users are going to get a decent specced compact messaging device. It wouldn’t surprise me if all the major UK carriers picked this one up.
More after the break.
If you are in the United States or know someone that is then Friday 30th April (yes, that’s tomorrow if you are reading this today!) is a big day in the Apple world. The Apple iPad 3G will go on sale. You will have to wait until 5PM to get one and clearly some shops will have queues so turning up early may be a good idea.
The iPad 3G comes with a micro sim built in and AT&T will be the carrier of choice. Prepaid data plans will be available for $14.99 (250MB cap) and $29.99 (unlimited).
The Apple iPad 3G will be priced as follows:
- $629 for 16GB
- $729 for 32GB
- $829 for 64GB
Here in the UK we are still waiting for the launch of the iPad and our prices are not yet confirmed. Both Matt and I have been lucky enough to get the Wi-Fi only iPad imported and we are both loving the experience. You can view Matt’s iPad unboxing video here.
If you are off to get a 3G version tomorrow I wish you the best of luck.
Posted by: James
Best Buy, a leading consumer electronics retailer, is set to open its doors to the public on Friday, 30th April at 7am. The highly anticipated first store will open to expectant crowds at the West Thurrock Retail Park, Essex and will be marked with four days of activities over the early May Bank Holiday weekend, with plenty of amazing deals, competitions and entertainment.
The doors will open at 7am on Friday to allow technology enthusiasts from the local area and London to take advantage of the great deals on offer before heading to work. The rest of the bank holiday weekend will be themed to showcase the breadth and depth of Best Buy’s offer with a focus on music, movies and games.
Best Buy is offering a wide range of amazing deals during the weekend, saving early customers hundreds of pounds on the latest and greatest technology. Samsung’s current 32" LED HD TV is available for only £399.99, equating to a saving of £300, whilst the Toshiba 32" HD-ready LCD TV is available for only £179.99! Best Buy is also offering the latest Blu-Ray content, with the Avatar Blu-ray and DVD combi pack at just £9.99. Meanwhile, football fans will have an extra reason to celebrate this, as foremost amongst the offers to look out for is Best Buy’s pledge to give customers their money back on any TV over £499 bought before 5th June if England wins the final.
Lots more info after the break…
Earlier in the week we announced the launch of Nokias first Symbian 3 handset, the N8.
The Nokia N8 looks to be packed full to bursting point with top end features and to give you a little taster of what is to come Nokia have given us a promotional video, and what a nice video it is too.
If you didn’t see our post the other day here are just a few of the N8s great features:
- 3.5 inches Capacitive Touchscreen display
- supports multi-touch gestures
- Symbian^3 Operating System*
- 12-megapixel Camera
- Video – 720p at 30 frames per second
- HDMI output
- Divx Support
- web TV feature
Check out the video below and please let us have your thoughts on the forum.
Acer were one of the first to get on the netbook train with their Acer Aspire One AA0 that we tested some 18 months ago.
As time has gone on they have expanded the range and here we have the D250 which is a dual booting version – in this particular case it’s dual booting Windows 7 and Android.
Android on a netbook you say, isn’t that normally used for mobile phones? Well yes, but as proven here it can also be used as an OS on other hardware.
Let’s take a look…
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.
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:
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