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THERE
are a lot of big words being thrown around in the
wireless communications industry today. There’s
interconnectivity, intranetwork SMS, frequency
bandwidth, 3G, 4G, plus a whole slew of text promos—a
virtual avalanche of marketing speak to make today’s
hyper-caffeinated, earphone-tangled heads spin. Well,
another purveyor of wireless communications has entered
the market, and, yes, with it comes all the jargon one
would expect—with the prominent addition of a new word:
free.
That’s
one word you’re unlikely to see strung together in the
same sentence with your current network provider but for
ümobile, the mobile network launched by Connectivity
Unlimited Resource Enterprise Inc. (CURE), that’s just
the icing on the cake—and that’s some pretty good icing.
The
system will work through mobile advertising. ümobile is
credited with being Asia’s first and only in this
category, allowing its subscribers to view
advertisements from their partner companies. The
advertisements will be specifically targeted to what a
customer needs or wants, with the information being
provided by the customer during registration. But what’s
that catch?
They’re
pretty obvious. Not everyone really wants to read all
those ads, true—and this is where it gets interesting:
ümobile shares a portion of these revenues back to the
subscriber who can then purchase or make transactions
for ümobile services or avail himself/herself of
freebies, discounts and other rewards, such as free load
or voice calls, SMS, MMS and Internet.
Ardie
Balderrama, chief marketing officer of ümobile, explains
it better, saying what ümobile does is basically allow
subscribers to earn credit by watching commercials on
television or viewing print ads on a newspaper.
Balderrama said that many tech-savvy customers will
appreciate this feature. “Especially during these times
when the world economy is under crisis, the opportunity
to save money via advertising subsidizing one’s
mobile-phone usage will appeal to consumers,” he said
via e-mail. Apart from the freebies, ümobile can also
inform people of restaurants in nearby areas when
mealtime come around; for shoppers, it will be stores
nearby offering discounts.
He added
that they see much growth, citing industry statistics
proclaiming that by 2011 mobile advertising will be
worth about $19 billion worldwide, a huge leap from its
estimated $3 billion worth today.
Balderrama said that ümobile will not be available to
everyone and will specifically target men and women
between the ages of 15 to 35, or what they consider to
be the early adaptors and movers of this industry.
The idea
of advertisements appearing in one’s phone may concern
some people who are worried about getting ads that they
don’t want, but the company stresses that all these
advertisements are on a 100-percent permission-based
system.
The
advertising partners are, for the moment, unknown but
Balderrama said they are in the process of finalizing
agreements and announcements will soon be made. Needless
to say, the advertising partners will no doubt be those
catering to the ageistic target market.
ümobile
has more to offer besides an ad-based system and will be
introducing many new innovations, such as the ability to
change your number online anytime; mobile VoIP via fring,
a VoIP client that allows connectivity between PCs and
mobile phones; and purchasing load online using Paypal
or PayEasy, or via ATM card and credit card.
Given
the prevailing congestion of wireless communications
networks, resulting in dropped calls and busy lines, it
might appeal to some that ümobile’s subscription will be
limited to only about 10,000 new subscribers each
month—and subscription can be made only via invitation
(meaning, a subscriber would have to invite you or
you’re out of luck). Regarding connectivity, ümobile
will run on a 3G network, as most of its products and
services run on this technology, but subscribers on 2G
and 2.5G handsets can still use the basic services. CURE
was recently acquired by Smart Communications. |
