A confession…

Photo: The cans Festival, London

 

 

Remember the cutie with an impressive spec? Yes, I am talking about the Xda Orbit 2. Well I have a confession to make… whilst I think it is a brilliant phone with lots of cool and useful apps, I have actually started using my old Samsung E900 again. Don’t get me wrong, the Xda Orbit 2 is a fab phone but I am a texter and I missed having a keypad. I found it really hard to text on the go… yes I am a girl and I multi-task!

Go and check the Xda Blog for more info about the applications that can be downloaded onto the phone.

UPDATE: Steve from VCCP left me a comment to ask whether I had tried to download the resco keyboard. The answer is yes, I have… it is easier to text with the resco keyboard however it is not the same as pressing buttons…

Goodbye landlines, hello dongles!

   The folks at 3mobilebuzz recently sent me a new mobile internet dongle to play with, and I have to say that I have been very impressed!

 

The dongle is very simple to install – just whizz it out its box, plug it in and within minutes you’ll be online. I travel a lot around the UK for work and it was a pleasure being able to send emails during my London-Manchester train journey. I did get disconnected at times, but overall I was quite impressed with the signal strength.

 

I think there is a massive opportunity to market this product to Londoners. If you pick up a free London paper on your way to/back from work, you would probably have noticed quite a few ‘3’ ads for the dongle.

 

As a flat sharer, moving into a flat without an Internet connection can be nightmare and being tied to a 12 months contract for both a landline and broadband is both expensive and daunting if you’re not sure how long you are going to stay in that flat.

 

Why not advertise the dongle as a cheaper alternative to landlines and broadband and the bonus of being able to move out without having to worry about where your broadband/landline is registered? I am sure this would appeal to quite a few consumers emotionally. Fair enough, it’s not as fast a home internet connection but it certainly does the job for emailing and browsing the Internet…

 

My only criticism would be that 3 introduced too many different formats of dongles too quickly. My flatmate bought a ‘matchbox’ modem last year and wanted to have my dongle as she saw it – like a lot of customers, even though both dongles do the exact same thing, she wanted the latest one out! I think that offering different colours is a great idea – there seems to be a trend for pinks as far as mobile phones are concerned – why not dongles? At least they’ll certainly stand out from the competition!

 

3 currently have the cheapest tariffs out there and will even offer you a discount if you are already have a mobile phone contract with them. I think that ‘3’ could try to kill two birds with one stone by using their dongle offer to get consumers to switch mobile network… ‘3’ could also talk more to the very large Aussie community in London to sign up as ‘3’ is also available in Oz – and I am sure no one would say no to free calls back home with a Skype Phone!

Sharp photo taken with my Orbit 2

Street Art in Camden Town

 

It’s all about design…

Steve left me a comment asking me to define what makes a phone masculine, feminine or gender neutral…

I did a bit of research to see what phones were currently out on the market, and found this page in a Carphone Warehouse Brochure, which perfectly illustrates the different design trends…

The curvier the phone, the more feminine – take the example of the Ted baker HTC phone… pretty girly shape right? Well, fair enough it’s also purple!The Xda Stellar looks slightly more masculine than the Orbit 2 – probably because of its squarer shape as well as the buttons on the front of the phone…I think the Orbit 2 is gender neutral l – slightly rounder than the stellar but not as curvy as the Ted Baker HTC…

What do you think?

A cutie with an impressive spec… by the way, I am talking about the Xda Orbit 2

 

The highly anticipated Xda Orbit 2 is now available in the UK, and Steve at VCCP, the advertising agency behind the Cocoon seeding programme, asked me a couple of weeks ago if I was interested in reviewing the device… and I simply couldn’t say no to a shiny new toy!

The deal with VCCP is quite clear - I’ve been given this phone with no obligation upon me to say or write anything about it. But I will, as this is the sort of phone I was planning on upgrading to and I am glad to see a bigger range of smartphones available on the market.

I’ve been playing with my new toy in the last few days and my verdict so far can be summed up in one word: wow! The new Xda Orbit 2 is definitely a cutie with an impressive spec!

Whilst smartphones tend to be masculine looking, the Orbit 2’s design is gender neutral, yet stylish. The Orbit 2 is very easy to use … so intuitive in fact that the manual is still in the box! Saying that, O2 should still aim at improving their manuals (I believe I said the same thing about the Cocoon a few months ago…). I felt that the manual could have been organised in a more logical and comprehensive way (without being too bulky) as the information is all over the place… 

I am so far terribly excited about the camera, music player/digital radio (can’t wait to see whether I can at last ditch my iPod) as well as Co-Pilot 7. I am planning on blogging about these features in the coming weeks…. In the meantime, more reviews can be found right here on the Xda Orbit 2 Blog.

A few thoughts on seeding programmes

    Steve at VCCP asked me a while back how I felt about the 3 Skypephone seeding programme. The timing is perfect to share my thoughts as I have just agreed to take part in another seeding programme…

1)    Pitch it right

In case you didn’t know, my name is not Darryl and no I don’t live in the US! I am not quite sure how I would be able to blog about a US product when I don’t have any knowledge of the market… Read my blog (or at least pretend to read it!) and understand what makes me tick and what doesn’t. In the 5 minutes that you take to customize your pitch, the chances of me blogging about your product has gone up from 1% to 100%…

2)    So I’ve agreed to write about your product…

Comments and feedback about my posts are always welcome – it shows that you’ve bothered checking your links and that you care about what I have to say. I would suggest leaving comments on both my blog and your blog – it allows conversation (blogging is all about sharing ideas, right?) and will probably increase traffic on your blog.

Both the O2 Cocoon and 3 Skypephone campaigns were well executed – good pitches, interesting ideas but overall I felt that that the online discussion was one-way when I would have liked to see a two-way conversation i.e. people bouncing off ideas of each other, rather than a list of all the posts/reviews. As a researcher, I like to understand the why’s and how’s therefore when criticising a feature, I would have liked to know why the bloggers felt this feature was bad and how/what could be improved in future phones.

The 3 campaign was cleverly orchestrated using a number of successful web 2.0 sites such as flickr and youtube, however (sorry guys!) I didn’t get involved beyond the phone review, partly because I am not the target market for the 3 Skypephone.  

Both the O2 and 3 blogs look great however, my main criticism is that they are hard to find and I can’t see a link on the networks’ websites – consumers should be able to find these blogs easily and I would suggest that O2 and 3 put a link on their homepage which should hopefully increase traffic hence online interaction.

Kudos to O2 for allowing consumers to co-create (i.e. write posts) on their blogs – this blog could be a useful resource covering phone reviews as well as an online troubleshooting portal. If marketed properly, the blog could become a real strength for O2…

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on this   

Better late than never… my Skypephone review!

  

 

Life needed me in recent months and I do apologise to the folks at 3mobilebuzz  for not reviewing the Skypephone sooner.  Having done an awful lot of work on mobile phones and consumer buyer behaviour, I’d like to explain how I feel the consumer mobile phone market is currently segmented.  There are more or less 3 different types of consumers in the mobile phone market: 

• ‘Techno-geeks’ who love technology and who love to have the latest technology
• ‘Love-phone’ who will choose their mobiles on the basis of trends and aesthetics
• Cost-conscious consumers or ‘technophobes’ who will choose a network and tariff based on cost and who will end-up with a cheap mobile phone. The more you pay monthly the better the phone, the cheaper the tariff, the cheaper the phone (unless you are willing to pay extra money for a good handset)

 I feel that the 3 Skypephone appeals to the latter segment. 3 was the latest entrant on the market and it has been rather difficult for them to enter this saturated market. 3 has also sadly been the victim of bad WoM due to poor coverage in certain areas of the country. 

The 3 Skypephone is a great little phone – sleek, nice blue back-light and intuitive. In other words, ideal for cost-conscious consumers! In terms of technology, the 2 million mega-pixel camera is good although Samsung launched the G600 which has a 5 million mega-pixel camera more or less at the same time. The Skype function is simply amazing and will probably reduce your bills quite a lot. My flatmate calls her parents in Australia who also own a Skypehphone for free.  

However I find the button hard to press and it’s a shame that you cannot use your Skype credit to call mobile phones or landlines – well I guess 3 would go bust if they allowed it! I also find the signal a little weak at times resulting in me not being able to use the Skype function.  Overall, I think the Skypephone is a great little phone for technophobes – easy to use and cost effective.

Unfortunately I am not the target market for this phone… I think that the UK market is increasingly heading towards Blackberries and Windows based phones and this is probably what I will go for when upgrading in April.  Looks like Blackberry is likely to suffer stiff competition from Windows based mobiles in 2008…

3 Skypephone seeding programme

The folks at 3mobilebuzz  contacted me a while ago to blog about the new 3 Skype phone. As it turns out, I am currently working on a project for 3 and I therefore agreed to take part in the 3 Skypephone trial. First of all, I have to say that their PR pitch is absolutely outstanding – their original email (excerpt below) definitely caught my attention and they have constantly kept in touch to find out how I was getting on.

‘Having looked through your blog, I’m a fan of your take on modern times, and was intrigued by the Bathroom Blogfest idea. Also reading back, the fact that Paddington likes Marmite! I feel defiled. Anyway I digress monumentally - I was wondering whether you’d be interested in trialling a pair of 3 Skypephones for a month?My name is Matt and I’m part of  3 mobilebuzz , an independent collector of online conversation relating to 3’s mobiles and service. Currently, the arrival of the 3 Skypephone is generating a lot of coverage and we’d like to get you involved […]’

I will be reviewing the actual phone shortly but I would like first of all to discuss their PR strategy. The folks have kept me updated on reviews all over the blogosphere and have put together a clever web 2.0 campaign using twitter, flickr, facebook and youtube.  They are also currently running a competition to win Skypehphones. Here’s how it works:

‘ We at 3mobilebuzz are running a little competition - the winner gets three 3 Skypephones, second place gets two and third place gets one. Also two devices will be awarded to the blog that refers the winning entry.

All entrants need to do is tell us why they want a 3 Skypephone – and it can be done however they want as long as it can be linked to. For example, it could be a blog post, forum thread or simple webpage, a picture or a set on Flickr, a link to a YouTube video or even a Facebook group where 100 friends sign up and support the quest for a 3 Skypephone. The more creative the better.’

If you fancy winning a phone, click here!

One more thing about the Cocoon

 I have been an O2 customer for years, and every year around upgrade time, I start looking into the different types of mobile phones on the market.  

I have to say that advertising is very influential because it’s very difficult to escape ads on the Tube! In addition to advertising, I usually browse the O2 website as well mobile phone reviews sites hence the importance of viral marketing especially in the case of O2 who do not advertise their phones.  

I had a little look at the phones available and the Cocoon is currently featured on the front page under the phones section – so far, so good!  

However when I clicked on the picture of the Cocoon to get more info about it, I felt the description on the site was letting the phone down – what about the alarm clock feature, the nest, the map of the O2 arena? In addition, I could not find a link to the Cocoon’s blog or the Cocoon’s webpage!  

Can someone point me in the direction of these links?  

Why did O2 set up a webpage for the Cocoon, a blog as well as sending a free phone to bloggers if they are not going to clearly advertise it on their site?

Introducing the O2 Cocoon

Peter Kwong of advertising agency VCCP in London recently approached me about a project he is working on for mobile phone supplier O2.  

O2 recently launched a new 3G quadbrand mobile phone called Cocoon and the guys at VCCP contacted me to blog about it. Very much like Neville Hobson, I do get quite a lot dodgy pitches, most of the time from the USA but:

1)     The folks at VCCP actually took the time to read my blog and leave a comment

2)     Their pitch is of interest to me - I try to understand consumers for a living and just thought it would be a good idea to check out and get involved with the O2 Cocoon blog.  

I have been an O2 customer for years and as ‘a valued customer’ O2 upgrade my phone once a year no questions asked. I have now had a Samsung phone for the last 3 years, and I upgraded to a Samsung E [insert number] back in May.  Well that’s right – I don’t even know what my phone is called! Kudos to O2 for using an actual name rather than some random code we consumers, can never remember!   

The Cocoon project

 Source: ‘Taking inspiration from real life, we asked designers, fashion students and musicians from London to Tokyo, Shanghai to Rio, “what inspires you, and what do you want from a mobile phone?”

The answer? Something emotional. Original. That doesn‘t look like a phone or a music player - something more natural, that‘s visually stunning and functions perfectly.’

I usually go for branded phones (Nokia, Samsung) even though I perfectly know that the O2 phones are out there… but why?

1) O2 phones are not advertised resulting in limited awareness of these phones

2) Consumers tend to go for well-established brand.

I won’t spend too much time reviewing the Cocoon phone at this present moment as I only received the mobile phone on Saturday – saying that the phone is pretty good and looks great and more will follow on the subject. I’d like to discuss the O2 Cocoon blog for now.  

First of all, I am glad to see that the Cocoon was developed with the help of consumers. Marketing lesson #1: marketing is about meeting your customers’ needs and wants.

I think the blog is a great idea – viral marketing can do wonders especially for an ‘unbranded phone’. The folks at VCCP told me that when purchasing the phone, O2 customers had the opportunity to blog about it on the O2 blog and they have also been approaching bloggers since July.  

Although I think the O2 Cocoon blog is a great idea, interaction on the blog is still fairly limited even though all technical problems reported seem to have been addressed.  The posts are generally good however the blog does not necessarily cover all technical aspects of the phone.

 As a qualitative researcher, I like to understand the ‘why’s’

• ‘I’ve had my phone for a day and I love it’ – what do you particularly like about the phone? Why?
• This is a seriously well thought out, sexy and functional piece of kit’  - which functions of the phone do you particularly like? Why?  

Although the feedback on the blog is certainly insightful to O2, I would like to see the blog’s administrator ask specific questions on the phone and get bloggers to leave a comment, something similar to a bulleting board. 

Saying that I am very impressed by O2 efforts and I’ll be reviewing the phone very soon!