Orange and disposable pen maker Bic are joining forces to launch a 49 EUR BicPhone, that will come with the battery pre-charged, and one hour of call time. The phone will be widely available across France from 7th August. The phone is made by a Chinese ODM called TCL, and will support just voice and text.

As Bic is well-known for it’s bright colour pens (and shavers and lighters), you can expect the phone in lots of garish nice colours. Latterly, the phones are also going to get store-space in Orange’s shops.

I was going to say this story was nothing to write home about, but that is such a poor pun…..

[Via: Telecom Paper]

Much as Motorola were the other day, now Samsung are busy mailshotting me, to let me know about the Tocco (F480). I got a lovely email inviting me to check out the website, which I duly did. On arrival, I landed on a very busy homescreen, but on clicking through to the Tocco, found a message (see above) asking me to “imagine customizing my touchscreen“… I’d invite readers to close their eyes and have a go, it really is quite a magical experience!

Anyhoo, if you want to actually buy the phone from the Samsung mobile shop, it’s £315 – but right now it’s out of stock. Alternatively, you can peruse your friendly network operator, or independent shop.

Check out the Tocco at the Samsung site here.

Jaguar recently launched their new XF model in the US, and went big on Mobile Advertising to do so – details below…..

First of all, what does the XF look like? Well for all you petrol-heads out there:

Jaguar wanted to communicate the vehicle’s break through styling and unique features to a target audience that was male, 35 to 54 years old, and with a high level of household income. Mobile proved to be a great way to do this.

Banner Ads were placed on mobile internet sites such as MSN.mobi, cars.mobi and Yahoo Mobile, in order to drive (if you’ll pardon the pun!) people to a Mobile-oriented wesite. Impressively, by May 2008 (from a launch in Nov 2007), over 15 million ad impressions had been generated. This brought 85000 unique visitors to the Mobile site. Further on from this were some nice stats about usage of the site:

• 12,000 videos downloaded
• 18,000 wallpapers downloaded
• For users who visited beyond the home-page, the average dwell time was 2 minutes
• 1.2% of users requested an email brochure by entering their email address into the WAPsite
• 2.6% located their nearest dealer to arrange a test drive

The Mobile site was designed so that it would serve up the right images and videos to the correct handset – quality being important when you are trying to get over a feeling of luxury!

The results from the campaign were pretty good, although perhaps not as large as other advertising sectors – but that’s no bad thing – Mobile Advertising is growing, and as more contextualised and relevant ads are served, it will become a more widely-recognised and acceptable channel.

[Via: MobiAD News]

Chinese handset vendor ZTE plans to invest 100mn RMB (that’s about 5.5mn GBP if my maths is right…) in promoting it’s handset brand in 2008, according to reports. ZTE is also targeting sales of 50mn handset in 2008 – currently the U980 model accounts for one third of all TD-SCDMA handsets sold by China Mobile (NYSE: CHL).

You might of heard of ZTE previously as a provider of handsets to 3, predominantly (if memory serves), in the prepay arena with F866 (below). However, given the rate at which hi-spec handsets are coming out of China currently, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see some devices on a par with the leading European vendors’ devices, in the near future…

[Via: Pacific Epoch]

Update time for y’all – remember I spoke about the very very cool Moto Z10 competition that’s happening? If not, read here. Well, I’ve just been informed that the YouTube channel, to submit videos to, is up and running – you can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/motoroladirectorme

If you are stil none the wiser, check out my previous post here, and get yo’ act together to win a Z10 and £10K!

StarHub recently announced that it has now officially launched Singapore’s first nation-wide LBS (location-based service) for mobile advertising. For advertisers, the fit is obvious – send marketing/promo messages (SMS) to subscribers when they are in contextually relevant location. For customers, they get appropriate messages to what they are doing, both on a where and when basis.

For the launch, WTS Travel & Tours, (a big player in travel industry there) will be using the service to inform customers of promos and deals. Other advertisers and merchants will be going live shortly, apparently.

Comment: given the defined (and restricted) geographical area an Island occupies, this is a great place to try out Mobile services – there’s a reason why O2 (NYSE: TEF) deployed 3G first on the Isle of Man for example! Everyone has got to be happy with targeted Ads, but having them contextualised for location is a neat spin on things – I can’t wait for the first set of stats showing the service uptake and conversion in to buyers from those clicking through – bring me the stats!

[Via: hardwarezone.com]

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) have gone live with an awesome competition for those of that are a bit creative with old digital video – how do you fancy winning (a) one Motorola Z10, and (b) £10,000? Yes? Then read on!

The competition
The competition is extremely easy to enter. Entrants should pick a ‘logline’ (‘logline’ being film industry speak for a one-sentence summary of a film’s plot. For example, Alien’s original logline was “Jaws in space”) and use it to form the basis for a short film of no more than 90 seconds in length. As long as they relate to the logline, films can feature any subject matter the creator chooses (subject to the rules below): funny, emotive, thought-provoking or slapstick, all are welcome. And entries won’t be judged on production value – they can be as rough and ready as the creator likes.

Step one – Entries must be posted to a YouTube group by May 30th from where they will be placed on a Motorola-branded YouTube channel. Entries in the first stage will be judged by the panel with representatives from Empire, O2 (NYSE: TEF), Motorola and advertising agency Ogilvy. However, it is also an opportunity to showcase your work in front of friends and family. The makers of the top twenty films will win a MOTO Z10 phone and be named as Finalists with their videos reviewed on Empire.com.

Step two – The twenty Finalists will be invited to produce a second short film, using only their newly prized MOTO Z10. They will be given a week to create the second film which they are required to post online to a YouTube group by the deadline of 13th June. These entries will be featured on Empire Magazine’s website and will be reviewed by the same panel of judges. The film judged best by the panel of judges will be declared winner and the maker will win the main prize of £10,000. The content from successful entries may also feature in a ‘DIY movie making’ video to be produced and released by Motorola at a later date to further promote the handset.

The Prize
The 20 winners of Stage One will receive the MOTO Z10 handset with which they are required to film an additional film with a ‘logline’ of their own creation. The overall winner will receive a cash prize of £10,000. The winner will not only get the plaudits and kudos associated with winning but also the opportunity to have their work scrutinized and critiqued by an esteemed panel of judges.

Comment: this is truly cool – an excellent competition with GREAT prizes, from a Mobile Vendor that we all want to see do well. The Z10 is really great with media playback (and recording, so if you want one, and a chance to win the £10K, check out the URL below

http://www.hellomoto.co.uk

An interesting article popped up on MobiAD News the other day, which talks about what Media Planners are looking to get from Mobile. Rather than relay the article wholesale, I though I’d pick out some salient points:

• “Potential” – One very big potential for mobile is that it should become a media channel of choice for FMCG brands

• Buying Media – A major problem is that the mobile media market is very fragmented, making it a time consuming and inefficient task to contact all the individual media owners. We need transparency!

• Measurement – One of the biggest issues around measurement is that the data – if it is available at all – it is not provided in a way that is easy to use. It makes it very inefficient from a time and cost point of view to operate in mobile

• CTR (Click-through rate) reliance – If we only measure CTR, then it will create problems later on when we clients start to want to run brand campaigns – …. the role for mobile will be far more about engagement and awareness

• Economics of a Media Agency – there was a strong consensus that today mobile is not profitable for media agencies. Both because of the inefficiencies mentioned above, and also because of the large amount of consulting expertise that has to be provided to clients.

Comment: This is really interesting feedback from “the other side of the fence” – it basically points the finger at the mobile industry for not being easy to work with, not providing great data, and using poor measurement tools. In contrast to the bullish statements made by “Mobile Advertising” companies, it’s nice to how the “customer” (and by that I mean those on the media side) feel about Mobile.
Ultimately it’s very positive because these are great learnings for Mobile Ad providers – and the potential and uniqueness of Mobile means it can suceed for sure – it’s just needs some further work to bring it on a par with the other, more mature, advertising mediums.

[Via: MobiAD News]

M:Metrics has just revealed research on the demographics and size of the audiences for mobile media. The measurement firm reports that young males are a rich target for mobile advertisers, as among mobile phone users 36 percent of 18 to 34-year-old men accessed mobile media in February. Men in this age group are also highly receptive to SMS advertising, with 9 percent responding to an SMS advert they received, versus a 4 percent market average.

In Western Europe, the male population is more inclined to browse and download content on the mobile Web. A quarter of all male mobile phone users accessed mobile media, compared to just under 19 percent of women. This audience is also quite young: 28 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds consume mobile media, only 12 percent of those 55 and older do.

“Reaching the 18 to 34-year-old age demographic is a real challenge to advertisers, as this group is spending less time consuming print and broadcast media,” observed Paul Goode, senior analyst. “According to TGI M:Metrics data, in Great Britain, young consumers are redirecting that attention to mobile, as 18 to 34 year olds comprise 56 percent of mobile media users, compared to only 29 percent of TV viewers.”

Interestingly, U.S. mobile users are more active consumers of mobile media, as unlike Europeans they use SMS less frequently for news and information retrieval and are more likely to have data plans, which directly impacts mobile content consumption. Among Europeans, the UK has the highest percentage of mobile media users, at 26.8 percent, while Germany and France lag, at 18.4 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.

“In the UK, mobile media is attracting a highly desirable audience that is 44 percent more likely to be defined as ‘cash rich, time poor’ than the market average. In fact, data from TGI M:Metrics confirms that one third of all UK mobile media users agree they are tempted to buy products they’ve seen advertised.”

“Since the early days of mobile advertising, SMS advertising has been an effective way to reach the masses, but advertises are now actively looking at the mobile web to access new audiences,” said Goode. “According to TGI M:Metrics, adding mobile to a media plan increases the efficiency of reaching key target groups, a metric that will continue to improve with the growth of 3G and smartphone ownership.”

UK: Tesco, the (primarily) food-retailing superstore, which also happens to run an MVNP, has been trialling a WAP advertising portal since May 2007 – Tesco says access to the portal has been growing, resulting in 300,000 unique visitors in December 07.

The Ads were delivered as “traditional” banner Ads with a click-through, and included brands such as ITV, Nivea and Teletext.

Interestingly, Tesco said it’s demographics include a large segment of female household “budget owners”, with an average age of 36 – this apparently means that for advertisers with products that are “fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries and cleaning products”, it is a good target audience.

The survey that Tesco commissioned apparently showed that “more than half (60 per cent) of portal users are female and the same percentage said they visit the portal at least once a month, while 69 per cent claimed they would click on a relevant advert.”

These stats seem to fly in the face of typical Mobile Internet access – either Tesco know something we don’t, or they have the most M-Internet-savvy user-base I’ve seen in some time!

[Via: Silicon.com]