Virgin Planning Smarter Phones, Including Touchscreen
By Simon Sage on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 8:33 AM PST In Virgin Mobile
The prepaid scene tends to be littered with the lower-end of the mobile product spectrum, but Virgin Mobile CEO Dan Schulman says that will be changing in the near future. He said in the next three to five years, the smartphone market share will comprise up to half of sales (currently holding about %20), and Virgin Mobile will be there to provide the cheap, flexible, month-to-month plans that are appealing to those on a shoestring budget.
“Things like value and flexibility are moving to the forefront,” he said. “I think the economy is helping people to appreciate our model.”
From the sounds of it, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) will be moving down the ladder over the next year, and other manufacturers are likely to follow suit in order to nab low-hanging fruit. Virgin’s Helio acquisition is a definite sign that they’re looking to incorporate more feature-rich devices while keeping rates low, but their bread and butter will likely remain cheap-o flip phones for the next little while.
[via CIO]
Okay, lately I have been looking for a new phone, and company as well. I have been using virginmobile for about 4 years, the only problem is I would really like a touch-screen phone, I really like the X-tc that came out, but it would be even better if it was a touch-screen. I want to join the crowd that has the amazing touch-screen phones, and I know that by getting touch-screen phones many people would want to buy them….So please think about making them! I’m planning on changing my phone service A bit later this year and it would be great if a touch-screen was availabe at Virginmobileusa.com, it doesn’t seem fair that other virginmobile countries like France and Australia have amazing touch-screen phones that even here in america from people like At&t, T-mobile, and Sprint do not have yet.