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| Sales and distribution strategy and channels, of Discount Mobile Service Providers/MVNO's |
Discount mobile service providers are invisible in the physical world and they sell immaterial services
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- but the mobile operators are in no doubt as to the effect of their existence. How are the discount mobile service providers utilising the web as their powerful central lifeline?
The mobile discount mobile service providers have revolutionized the Danish mobile market and attracted the attention and business from a great number of customers, simply by offering mobile solutions without any subscription and with prices for "voice minutes" and SMS messages that the traditional mobile operators have had great difficulty in matching. This huge flow of new customers to the discount mobile service providers has all happened without most of the customers having ever been near a mobile discount shop - the discount solutions are actually rarely sold through physical shops!
The discount mobile service providers whole success in business depends a great deal on the quality of their websites, more often than not these websites are the sole channel of sales and distribution and their window to the world. Customers can only register online and most often also pay online, although customers can also pay via SMS. The website also has to be extremely user friendly, so customers can find the answers to any questions they may have. In other words the website has to make it possible for customers to service themselves.
This whole new business area surrounding discount mobile telephony has just been analyzed in depth in our new report "The Moment Of Truth - A Portrait Of The Discount Mobile Service Providers Success" published by Strand Consult. In the making of this report, each discount mobile service provider's web solution was evaluated on 124 different factors and each provider could score a maximum of 620 points.
In general it proved to be relatively easy to register for a discount mobile service providers offering online, but the tested providers came out surprisingly different in the test as to how well and user friendly their websites are structured and the number of services available to customers. Only three discount mobile service providers - out of the nine tested - received top marks for their websites navigational ease of use. The discount mobile service provider featuring the greatest number of mobile services offered to their customers boasted 22 services out of the 26 services that the evaluation report asked about - at the other end of the scale, one discount mobile service provider only offered their customers 6 different mobile services.
It can not be stressed enough in this connection that the discount mobile service providers offer a very clear and simple overview of their free and add-on mobile services - all listed on a complete pricelist. There is in fact only one discount mobile service provider that offers a really good and user-friendly layout of all their mobile services and prices.
Our analysis of all the discount mobile service providers websites clearly shows that the best web solutions have been created by the two providers that solely offer discount mobile telephony and have no subscription based offerings at all. Out of a maximum possible score of 620 points, these two purely discount providers scored 430 and 378 points respectively. In comparison, the traditional mobile operators' discount offerings scored only 250 points on average. The lowest score out of the nine providers evaluated was a mere 212 points.
As a sales and distribution channel, the Internet is without a doubt the discount mobile service providers most important lifeline. This can be seen in the figures from Telmore, who in 3Q 2003 generated almost 40% of all the Danish Internet transactions made with the popular Danish bankcard "Dankort". Providers around Europe are going to have to get used to the thought of many mobile customers in the future using the Internet to order and pay for their mobile telephony - if they get the chance!
And there is no doubt that discount mobile telephony will spread across Europe Many existing providers will want to explore the opportunities, potential and income that discount mobile telephony has shown while becoming this huge success in Denmark. The report "The Moment Of Truth - A Portrait Of The Discount Mobile Service Providers Success" e.g. examines how the two Discount Mobile Service Providers (Telmore and CBB Mobil) have managed to acquire no less than 43.7% of all new mobile customers from 2H 2000 to 1H 2003! This is an outstanding achievement considering these two companies were both launched at the end of 2000. Add to this that around 20% of the total Danish mobile customer base is using a Discount Mobile Service Provider today and you just have to be pretty impressed. The report also analyses the development of the end-user prices for voice and SMS messages. In the past 10 months alone the price has dropped by around 50% so a discount mobile customer can today talk on his mobile phone for just 0.091 Euro and send SMS messages galore at only 0.026 Euro pr. message. It is only a question of time before we see a similar trend on all the other Western European mobile markets.
There do still seem to be many things that consumers are somewhat wary of purchasing online - but discount mobile telephony is not one of those things. For the consumers using the Internet to administrate their mobile telephony is simply ideal. It will be interesting to see how the European mobile operators and providers handle their launch of discount mobile telephony - because once you're online there's no turning back!
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More information "The Moment Of Truth" - A Portrait Of The Discount Mobile Service Providers Success"
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