State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

I thought the term ‘Sim Jagao’ was an interesting marketing phrase to ask people to start using Warid’s prepaid SIM again. I have noticed a number of such offers from all the mobile operators. Mobile number portability is one of the reason. Today it is easy for a customer to switch service. This ‘churn’ is an issue for the companies. My advice: pay attention to customer service and customers are more likely to stay with you.

This offer is for Warid prepaid customers who have not used their SIMS Since January 01, 2010. All such customers upon reactivating their SIMS will immediately get Rs.30 in their accounts as free activation balance. And not only this, they can also get free balance equal to 50% of their first recharge for three months. Another exciting feature is that the customer can enjoy facility of two numbers in their F&F list, one of Warid and one of any other network with the charges as low as Rs. 1 + Tax/min. This offer is valid till 15th June 2010.

Mobile services are fast becoming popular for a number of consumer-facing product and service companies. I came across a good post / reference for business strategists and marketers who want to justify a budget for mobile applications, services and campaigns. When it comes to Return on Investment, there are a few things which one should remember:

• Reasonable time frame for payback
• Count all major benefits
• Consider both hard costs and resources
• Factor in risks

Excerpt from the blog post follows. Read more »

As is often with new technologies, it takes a while before new technologies settle in and consumers get comfortable with it. Mobile ads are no different. According a recent survey on US consumer’s preferences about mobile ads, four in 10 consumers don’t want to see ads on their phones. The other six are ok with ads on their mobile phones.

Read more »

InMobi is a fast growing global mobile advertisement network. InMobi has been a sponsor to Telecompk.net for a while and we had the chance to sit with InMobi CEO and ask a few questions about the future of mobile advertising and opportunities in this exciting space.

How is InMobi different from its competitors?
Instead of focusing on being different we’d much rather focus on doing things better. What has helped us grow to this point is our focus on solving real customer needs and our value proposition to our partners. InMobi has consistently focused on providing higher quality and monetization levels for our publishers and greater return-on-investment (ROI) for advertisers, many of whom are trying the mobile internet medium for the first time, or for the first time in our region.

Read more »

Posting an excerpt from Flurry blog post which provides a unique perspective on mobile apps usage and retention.Flurry is the leading mobile analytics provider and has access to the data from a large pool of mobile apps. Application developers should take note of the insights offered here.

Mapping categories by usage frequency and retention also provides insights into pricing models. Quadrants I and IV (the right-hand side) are better suited, on average, to subscription (if supported by the respective app storefront) and advertising-supported models. The main reason is that these apps have perceived enduring value by consumers over a long period of time, and therefore more successfully retain their user bases. For ad-supported apps, this high repeat usage translates into more ad impressions served. Categories on the left-hand side, Quadrants II and III, are better suited for one-time download fees. Those apps may provide higher immediate satisfaction to users but their content, once consumed, rapidly loses their value.

The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 2,00 live applications and over 200 million user sessions tracked each month across Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Google Android, Blackberry, JavaME platforms.

The promise and potential of advertising and marketing on mobile phones remains big but elusive. Here are a few observations from leading research firm Forrester research. Summary is that mobile data usage and smar, useful applications will drive usage high and cause the advertising to take off as well.

Mobile remains one of the most anticipated, least adopted interactive channels in the mix. Sure, plenty of “cool” mobile programs exist: Sapient created a “spin the bottle” iPhone application for The Coca-Cola Company.(see endnote 27) But complexity around metrics, marketer, content, and carrier relationships, plus limited consumer mobile data use, stifles mainstream mobile marketing adoption today. Marketers will prefer more established tools to mobile until mid-2011 when we anticipate post-recession adoption will escalate. What will contribute to mobile marketing’s 27% CAGR over the next five years?

Increasing mobile data usage. More than 50% of consumers with mobile phones sent or received text messages and 21% sent or received emails via a mobile device in 2008, compared with 46% and 15% who did the same in 2007.(see endnote 28) We expect reliance on mobile functions to further increase as mobile devices improve, applications proliferate, and influential mobile users lead others to experiment.

Strategic mobile application development. Everyone is jumping on the mobile application bandwagon. iPhone reports more than 35,000 available apps ranging from iFart — an electronic whoopee cushion — to mobile bill pay apps sponsored by Wells Fargo or JPMorgan Chase.

Mobile maturity. As mobile matures as a marketing medium, its usefulness to marketers will improve. For example, the Code of Conduct for Mobile Marketing and Mobile Advertising Guidelines from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) take an initial pass at standards. New mobile capabilities like mobile search from Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo! will provide additional, familiar inventory. Advances in RFID and in-store technologies will tie mobile communications to end sales. And the broad rollout of near field communications (NFC) will turn mobile devices into points of sale. As part of the NFC forum, Nokia recruits firms like Citigroup’s Citibank, the Frankfurt RMV, and The Royal Bank of Scotland into NFC trials to help establish the physical infrastructure and marketer buy-in needed to make NFC work.

Global mobile advertising network operator mKhoj has rebranded itself as InMobi. The company decided that rebranding was necessary given that it will be focusing on Western Europe – where its services are currently already live in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain – after gaining sufficient scale on the Asian and African mobile markets. InMobi has been advertising on TelecomPk.net for a while as well. Here’s a write-up from Tech Crunch about this rebranding.

The startup is certainly performing pretty well in a very crowded market.

Based on our understanding of their eCPMs and monthly ad impressions (which range up to 2 billion per month and growing), it looks like they are currently grossing over $1m in mobile ad revenues per month.

That’s not too shabby, and if you consider that the eCPM rates they informed us about are based on averages from their operations on the Asian and African mobile markets, it’s conceivable that they’re looking at multiplying that revenue soon.

That is, if they manage to get traction in Europe, where eCPMs are generally much higher. If they book some early success, the company says it will be on track to become cash-flow positive later this year.

The company’s mobile advertising service – which is targeted more to the mobile web than applications – is currently available in over 23 countries and cites advertisers like Reebok, Yamaha, Cricket Nirvana and MakeMyTrip.

InMobi has offices in Palo Alto, India and Singapore. The company raised a total of $7.6 million to date, starting out with a $500k seed round from a group of angel investors and followed up by a multi-million financing round led by Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures (the VC firm started by Ram Shriram, early backer and founding board member of Google).

Take a look at the ad below from Telenor and share what you think the promotion appears to be. And then proceed to Telenor site to read the details. Blogs are already criticizing this. Updates to follow after your comments.

Sounds like a great deal. Ufone’s Bayhisaab Offer – a daily subscription - give you 20 minutes of talk time Ufone to Ufone and unlimited SMS to any network for ONLY Rs.15.99 + tax. All good unless you realize that the Bayhisaab comes out to 500 messages. As Ufone puts it: Fair Use Policy is applicable, up to 500 SMS (250 On-net and 250 Off –net)

I have criticized other companies on this issue. I believe that such claims of unlimited or bayhisaab are misleading. For 98% of users, 500 daily sms are more than enough. Of course people who are heavy users of sms can find other packages by Ufone or Zong sms bundle etc (there are too many to list) which can give them a better deal over a month instead of subscribing to a daily package. So why is Ufone trying to claim something which its not really offering?

Cross post from Basit Ali’s blog.

Recently Warid launched their pre-paid brand named “Glow”. I think its a great idea to attract more youth toward their products, but wait a minute. I’ve seen that ad somewhere else before. What was it?

Marketing department at Warid has done exactly what we have been blogging about for Zong. Zong’s print media ad and a television ad was so inspired by other pieces of art that they actually copied it as-it-is.

Now if you see Warid’s Glow ads, you’ll see colorful shadows of young people dancing and hopping on a black background. Now go to Google’s image search and type “iPod ad” and hit search. You’ll see bundles of results that look exactly like “Glow” ads.

Thanks to my friend who sent me above photo.

What do you think, its an inspiration or plagiarism?

Cross post from Basit’s blog

Recently, we have seen companies using sarcasm in hidden or obvious words causing a never ending race of ads showing up on media, especially television. This race has taken the shape of a war when it comes to telecom sector. Every telco is hitting others with the gestures, sentences, music, colors or whatever method they find appropriate. The team at Ufone has been doing its part as well but this ad, which is yet to be aired has taken it to another level. Watch for your self, they cant get better than that within 10 seconds.

Ufone – Mera number hay ….

At times I feel it is a little inappropriate but once it’s a war, all is fair in it. Please do post your comments.

There are signs of industry consolidation in the mobile phone advertising area. Here’s a report about this activity in the US market.

SmartReply, which designs telephone and email marketing programs for retailers, is acquiring mobile-ad firm mSnap. MSnap is one of scores of small companies that have sprung up in recent years on the assumption that advertisers would be eager to reach consumers on their mobile phones. They have entered the fray with a variety of business models, from building Web sites designed specifically to be visited via mobile devices to creating technologies that deliver ads in text messages. Since January 2006, about 80 such companies have raised more than $1.2 billion in venture funding, according to media and marketing investment bank Petsky Prunier.

The article notes that advertisers have been slow to shift their spending to mobil. With funding going away, many mobile-ad shops ar laying off employees, closing offices and trying to sell themselves before they are forced to close. Sounds familiar? some other areas of telecom industry may go the same way as recession continues.