Mobile Today has been on the case again and got a quote from the 3UK CEO Kevin Russell, regarding his predictions for 2009.
Mr. Russell starts off by saying that because of economic conditions, the customer is going to have more power with respect to the Operator – essentially customer retention is going to be a big issue, since customers will obviously looking for enhanced value.
3UK has been focusing on both growing the customer base, but also looking at costs – inlcuding self-service options for customers, network-sharing (with T-Mobile), and also the retail footprint in the UK.
Like with the O2 predictions, Mr. Russell sees a huge growth in the use of Mobile data – with the USB broadband dongle, but also going forward with devices like the INQ1 (which 3UK launched last year – see here). The INQ1’s tight integration of social networking services is an indicator of more people using internet services on their devices, Mr. Russell believes.
I pretty much agree with everything being said again here – the ‘killer app’ (if that’s the right phrase) for last year (and the year before) certainly seem to be the USB broadband dongle – an astonishing success in a somewhat more tepid mobile market. And devices like the INQ1 definitely have got the integrated mobile interweb approach sorted, even if perhaps the brand is still very new. I guess 3 will be working on new devices and services around INQ over the next year, to really drive take-up.
[Via: Mobile Today]