Showing posts with label personal MVNO opportunity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal MVNO opportunity. Show all posts

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

personal or celebrity MVNO Jennifer Lopez mobile mvno marketing

One of my more popular posts of just over a year ago was around the plans for Samuel Eto'o to Launch an MVNO in his native Cameroon, and it was for good reason: there is a lot of mileage in the personal mvno, or as it is now becoming more commonly referenced as celebrity MVNO.

So along comes Jennifer Lopez and announces an Hispanic MVNO or strategic alliance with Verizon to sell phones. What is more interesting about the JLO mobile deal however are two things: firstly that there have already been some Hispanic MVNO plays in the US market with Movida, Tuyo and Dexa among others, and secondly that it is in a market and host operator that has done this kind of thing before... yes, I am saying it will take a little longer to launch (the first) MVNO in Cameroon than an existing model, in an established market with a celebrity twist.
MVNOs need more than just a brand now, they need a brand that plays in many spaces and moves forward
This Celebrity twist may be the key, as so far the Hispanic MVNOs have had initial success, but ultimately have failed, and this is due to a mixture of two things:
  1. The customer outgrowing the brand: most Ethnic MVNOs sell on the USP of having a native language IVR, something which a customer can quickly outgrow
  2. Most MVNOs are very good at getting the first customers on board, the early adopter, however those that fail typically do so due to not evolving the product marketing to the second wave of "me-too" and mass market
So how can someone like JLO help? well it depends on how much she is involved, but on a simplistic level the customer is less likely to outgrow the product when they ground themselves in their environment.

Secondly, if someone like Jennifer Lopez is involved in the product cycle, even if at a very high level like the Will.I.am Intel innovation can really help to keep the customer engaged and the product evolved for longer.

You only have to Google "Jennifer Lopez Enterprises" to uncover companies such as BioWE, Nuyorican productions (nice!) and more, all this can add a much needed injection of ongoing product development and innovation to a mobile model, both the MNO and MVNOs that is in need of a different approach to product development and innovation that the new wave of celebrity or personal MVNO could add.

The celebrity in technology is not new, Clive Sinclair was the centre of the ZX spectrum,
The entrepreneur behind the spectrum was key, tho not enough for his next venture, the C5
Richard Branson was as bigger part of the value of Virgin Mobile as the trade mark itself, even beyond its native brand strong-hold, the UK
Launch publicity like this costs millions... or you can hand a celebrity / personality behind the brand from a rope!
Steve Jobs was the centre of Apple's ability to enter the mobile space that everybody, and it is hard to believe, everybody thought they would fail at. Indeed the then Nokia CEO famously expressed; "if I launched a 2G phone with those specs..." (the first iPhones were technically behind, but the OS and eco system more advanced, driven by vision, not typical technology product development.
Steve Jobs, and his vision of UX and eco system over hardware, were key to the success of  the iPhone
and many of the Victorian industrial revolutionists were a key part of the evolution of the brand and products and innovations. the Rocket, is not known as the rocket, but Stephenson's Rocket
Rocket? ah... you mean Stephenson's rocket!
The ideal is to return to business to attract the right people, which will happen, but in today's safe, grey and boring corporate world were management salaries are lagging, the talent is elsewhere and in entrepreneurial roles, and recruiting celebrities and personalities to inject a bit of life into your technology product is no bad thing.

Sunday, 20 January 2013

Future MVNOs and future MVNO models

Future MVNO

The future of MVNOs has been a long time coming, however there is still a long way to go, and the activity of 2012 shows that we are in for a very interesting 2013 MVNO wise, which will reflect well for the Telegeography predictions for 2013
There is still huge untapped opportunities in MVNO
However there are two things that strike me from this:

Mature MVNO market share

Market share in mature markets such as the UK, arguably the most mature as it was the first MVNO market and the two big originators of the MVNO; Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile, now have way above the W. European average at 13.7% of the market just to themselves, down from over 14% the previous year.
Source: Informa Mobile media 2011, EE market estimate Innovation Observatory Research
The above Diagram has been used by EE in their MVNO address for the past few years, and hints at huge potential in the MVNO market, but as an MNO presentation only touches the bigger picture. 

MVNO Brand Segmentation

If we dig deeper, as I do when doing the marketing plan and product development for new MVNOs, we see that each segment of the MVNO market to date, even markets that claim to be overcrowded  like the Ethnic, Supermarket and Brand MVNO space, are not actually overcrowded at all:
Segmenting even mature, overcrowded MVNO sectors shows there is still a lot of opportunity
For example, the overcrowded Ethnic MVNO market in the UK is not in fact overcrowded at all; the big players' competitive analysis shows that they have saturated certain markets (probably 20 of the 258 countries) and certain demographics, but far from the whole sector. The same rings for the Supermarket MVNO and even the Brand MVNO space, the above date has been randomised and renamed to protect the innocent, but am more than happy to give anybody the template with the date, use the MVNO contactify link to get in touch.

Updated Future MVNOs

So what is left to do in the below? Well the answer is quite a lot: 
  • Music is still in the pre-wholesale strategic sign-up phase, as is content, but you can expect the whole audio, video and other content market (think Red Bull MVNO model) to mature and expand.
  • Data MVNO has expanded, with Dell and Lenovo doing a Laptop based deal, Kindle in ebooks, Tom Tom for GPS and the whole M2M space
  • Healthcare has been successful in the US, and has lots of promise globally, with even Telefonica restructuring in 2012 to include a whole m-health vertical, which probably means its still in "the MNO can do it" mode, however this will soon change as MNOs dip their toes into the water via MVNOs
  • Converged MVNOs are really coming, with Virgin Media adding 1 Million Tivo boxes to its 4 Million mobile customers and presumably even more broadband, expect a wider definition of convergence than we may expect is all I can say...
  • The Global MVNO is also coming, however as we can see from the top graph, it needs the disparity between the various markets to meet, or at least more markets to reach the 10% MVNO market share for it to kick off.

Original Future MVNOs Article 2008:

Future MVNOs

Future Mobile Virtual network business Models
There are many upcoming MVNOs in the pipeline, however they are very different; they seem to be more mature, building on a core business proposition and mobile as a channel, rather than playing directly in the mobile space with a brand. For me the hottest MVNO prospects are:
  • Music MVNOs, with wholesale data and even "all you can eat" data tariffs emerging but being slow to take-up, this model could work well. However, it will not be download as much as you like to a "free Nokia N91". It is more likely to take the form of an established music brand enabling either an On Device Portal to browse, find and purchase music, even download a certain amount of lower quality/realtone tracks immediately over 3G, but the general ideal will be to download and save them on a PC or shared network space and upload them to the device by memory card or even USB connection. As an advocate of wireless & mobile I have found it difficult to admit, but the fact is that MP3s over bluetooth, 3G and even Wi-Fi, just don't make for a great user experience, nor aid battery life - the spanner in many mobile cogs!
  • Data MVNOs, building on mobile broadband, either by reselling or repackaging existing services, such as O2 mobile broadband, which is already resold by many players in the business as a service provider or enhanced service provider by hardware resellers, M2M providers and other solution providers and system integrators; or more complex solutions, which may or may not creep over into other areas above and below, such as hardware MVNOs.
  • Healthcare: the opportunities are huge: I pay a handsome sum of money every month to an insurance company, less now I have filled in various profiles... the next step is for my insurer to give me a Nokia 5500, which could easily be paid for and more with my insurance, and which uploads my daily footsteps info to their database to reduce my premium when I exercise regularly. To see the output a healthcare MVNO would see from a Nokia 5500 click here. A lot easier than the pedometer my Health Insurance gives me now, and a proper MVNO revenue opportunity.
  • Content MVNO. The content MVNO can work, despite the demise of ESPN, but it will be based on data usage with maybe an On Device Portal or a custom OTA firmware, where the "Vodafone Live" button starts the customer experience, rather that custom handset, and the business model will be around the value of that content, rather than trying to compete on minutes with the network; it has to be a content blackberry in terms of user take-up.
  • Global MVNO. There has been little talk of this model, and so far we have just seen a few SIM based products, however, there is a huge market for the global traveller  from big city banker to individual consultant with passport, will travel, all the way down to interailing youth. There are many VAS that can be added to this model, from student info to VoIP or even just automated calling card applications.
  • Converged MVNO. People have Skype, Dect phones, mobile phones, work IP phones, work analogue phones, SOHO phones, IM, SMS, uncountable emails, some web, some on exchange, some on their laptop/desktop... there is space for converged MVNOs in every sector, its just a question of who will move first, and watch everyone follow. Or Has Apple already led, and it will take the followers to not be so preoccupied with exclusivity and 40% to realise that convergence, and a X% of their mobile, broadband and roaming is a better deal...
  • More coming soon...
Originally posted by Christian Borrman 18:50pm 11/11/08

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

Samuel Eto'o MVNO cameroon the first of many personal mvnos

A very interesting MVNO launch recently has been the launch of Samuel Eto'o Fils is to launch his own MVNO in his home country Cameroon.

before going into detail, I want to get across that is is important in many ways:

  1. It is in Africa, a continent that has been a world leader in many mobile developments, most so in mobile payments where there are multiple players in multiple regions, and as such the MVNO could server as an important enabler of new mobile technologies where the MNO can sometimes be slow, as well as the regulatory reform that most African countries are on the cusp or or in the midst of
  2. It is football, the football MVNO has been very slow to market for various reasons, too many to list here from the last 10 years, but the time is right for the football MVNO, as well as other affiliate MVNO schemes, however, what is important is that the right club, or in this case the right player initiates and sets the tone for others to follow, which brings me to
  3. It is the right player, in the right market; an older, respected player who is seen as a positive role model and has done lot's of well intended charity work, not just the token celebrity PR charity work, not just in Cameroon but further afield, whose "brand equity" will export to other countries, but has not chosen a crowded or too high profile market in which to launch
So far so good. Like with any MVNO, there are still pitfalls and the above are by no means a guaranteed recipe for success, however we start well, which is important.

African MVNO opportunity

The African market has been crying out for more MVNO activity for a while. It is a very interesting market where I have done quite a bit of work, from rolling out pan-African pre-pay TV, VAS aggregator and social networking products as well as other projects around pan African mobile payments: in short:
  • The market wants regulatory reform, is mostly there, it needs a vehicle to push it, VAS aggregation or app stores may push it, buy MVNOs would be better for everybody - from mobile number portability to single short-codes and numbers in every country to real pan African aggregators
  • The market wants more innovation, mobile payments got Africa off to a flying start, but a lack of dynamic vehicles is slowing it down. Once MNOs have got over the shock of MVNOs (usually about the time they see the amount of almost 100% EBITDA positive revenue they generate) they are also a fantastic platform for innovation that does not entrench the market where each operator mimics the other no matter what (GPRS, SMS, PTC, etc). That is, an MVNO in the states could have launched push to talk and would not have caused a de facto push of all MNOs to PTC, as it did with Nextel launching PTC: all that money later, where is PTC now??? 
Personal MVNO opportunity

The personal MVNO had to happen, it is a subset of the Brand MVNO opportunity and could work very, very well as
  • Consumers tend to grow stronger and more loyal followings than brands, and they do not tend to go out of fashion as soon as other brands do. 
  • They also lend themselves to a wider Value Added Services (VAS) opportunity, where the football club or other brand tend to use the MVNO as a brand extension for their core product, a person can easily endorse a wider range of products without diluting the proposition and as such keep the product fresher, more relevant, for longer. With Football based VAS we have rolled out for various MNOs and MVNOS we have seen subscriptions to footballers' feeds be much, much more loyal than those of clubs or leagues
  • Personalities tend to cross borders better than clubs, which at the end of the day are more "national". there is therefore more opportunity to export both the model and the brand itself.
  • people tend not to have a conflict: where a club may be sponsored or have links with an operator, a personal brand is seen as a "free agent".
However, having said this, the brand is important - it should be an inclusive brand. Eto'o does not spark a controversy or an objection; controversy may sell initially, but it does not expand well, nor attract the golden feature of any MVNO: loyalty. you also do not want a brand that even the most loyal fan may feel ashamed of or want to keep quiet at any moment. That is, with a club phone, you do not want it to ring when you are in a bar watching a game with a bunch of supporters from another team, or when you have beaten someone away... a player does not have that "exclusion".

So what will be key to personal MVNO success:
  1. Value added services, starting with the obvious (which should be for free) but moving beyond that
  2. Getting the right deals and partners: the MNO, MVNE and other contracts should not have the usual clauses that make it difficult for the MVNO to be traded, sold or floated or even ported, should it become too big or too different to what was expected and no longer fit either parties strategic needs. This is the case for any MVNO, but more so with ones like this which are firsts, and the unknowns are huge: this could easily attract 1 million or more of the Cameroon population, or could only have 50,000 subs after 3 years, even then, the spend, type of usage, handset preference and many more unknowns mean that any/all of the parties may outgrow or be outgrown by the product.
  3. keeping it simple and scalable: no personalised handsets, no VAS that cannot be scaled or retracted or need silly numbers to get ROI... the business model needs to work on many levels and adapt to the unkowns
If it does this we may well have out next MVNO model darling, and it will be all about the brand again... bless :)

I shall be adding more in the coming months and pasting updates vai the Virtuser Google+ and Virtuser Facebook pages, so please like us on Facebook and +1 us if you have found this article interesting, useful or helpful.