Verdere consolidatie opkomst?
Tim Russel van de mobiele breedband aanbieder 3 heeft een aantal interessante uitspraken gedaan in een interview met Times.
Mobile phone stores are, surely, going to be among the casualties of the downturn. They are everywhere, as ubiquitous as coffee bars on Britain’s high streets. Store closures seem inevitable.
Not only the shops, either. Cost pressures could mean that rival networks will have no option but to get much cosier. Tie-ups such as the recent one between those former opponents O2 and Vodafone, to pool their networks, will become commonplace.
So amid all this prospective carnage, you might expect Kevin Russell to be a troubled man. In which case, you might be surprised: the chief executive of 3 UK is anything but: “It is a sign that the industry is starting to grow up and it is a good thing,” Mr Russell said of what he expects to be a recession-led rationalisation of the sector. “Anyone who cites competition issues doesn’t understand the marketplace. It is common sense and it is good for the customers.”
And if you are selling something that defines the age, all the more reason to be positive: “Mobile is a great product in a recession. People might relinquish their gym membership or golf club pass,” he insisted, “but they will always cling on to their phone.”
The athletic Scotsman, whose football boots hang by his desk, primed in readiness for lunchtime matches, has every reason to be optimistic. After a long, hard and hugely expensive slog, 3 UK is finally enjoying a transformation in its fortunes. Losses at the group, which hit £1.4 billion five years ago, were reduced this year to only £152 million. Analysts are speculating that the final chapter in the company’s turbulent history might be approaching, with a potential sale or merger on the cards.
Mr Russell, 42, a former chartered accountant, was working elsewhere in the group when Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate that owns the 3 mobile businesses, launched it in the UK six years ago. From a disastrous start — its handsets failed to arrive on time, leaving its new shops with nothing to sell — the problems kept piling up. The whizzy new technology, which cost £4 billion, was riddled with pitfalls. Gimmicky video phone handsets costing consumers £100 a month were described as “hot enough to fry an egg on”. The company was eating its way through billions of pounds as it tried in vain to catch up with the dominant players, Vodafone and O2. It was the stuff of nightmares.
But nightmares do not last. You wake up eventually. Mr Russell, who took up the top job two years ago, says that the company has found its niche. With 4.9 million customers —8 per cent of the UK market — it is successfully positioning itself as a nimble challenger, forging alliances with upstart technologies such as Skype, the free internet calls group, to counter the restrictions of a saturated market.
“We are no longer about mobile television and video calling and iPhones,” he said. “We are a data network which appeals to mass market users.”
The philosophy is this: lure in customers with good-value deals — such as offering Skype to make “free” calls on your mobile 24/7 — then encourage them to spend money by using other services.
Commentators say that Mr Russell’s approach was dictated by necessity rather than choice. The red ink on the balance sheet and the growing clout of its rivals left the fifth-ranked player with little choice but to distinguish itself as sharply as possible. Perhaps — but while O2 and Vodafone feared the likes of Skype, 3 UK saw its chance. With great fanfare, in 2007 it announced that it would be the first network to end restrictive call charging. It would smash the traditional business model and allow customers to use Skype on its phones to make calls for free, just as they could on their PCs.
To the uninitiated, the strategy could seem a route to bankruptcy, eating up call revenues, but analysts reckon that, in reality, most Skype calls by 3 phone users are to PCs and so are not substitutes for normal mobile-to-mobile or mobile to fixed-line calls.
bron:Times
