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Someone I know tried to pre-order a HTC Magic G2 phone today as it is available for pre-order on the Vodafone website. As a Vodafone customer they thought this would be straight forward and were really looking forward to getting their hands on a phone that should have been out a few weeks ago. Not so, although the phone is available to pre-order on the vodafone.co.uk website unfortunately that’s only for new customers. Existing customers will only be able to order the phone after May 5th when Vodafone has the phone in stock and knows what its going to charge for it.

A little surprising given that Vodafone have decided which tier the phone will be in and even when the customer threatened to go to O2 and get an iphone, the customer care agent still couldnt do anything for the customer. How frustrating.

If Vodafone are planning on putting new customers first for all new handset releases as they did with the Blackberry Storm and as it sounds like they are doing with the HTC Magic then the company is neglecting the cheaper customer and risks increased churn levels. New customers are expensive to acquire and are very much an unknown entity where as Telco’s have a far greater insight into existing customers spend patterns. In this example the customer is chasing the operator asking to be signed up for another 18month plan on a more expensive monthly tariff.

Working for one of the biggest FTSE 100 companies can be intresting, rewarding but also seriously frustrating. Im the sort that likes to know whats happening but recently it seems that staff are always that last to know about things no matter how important or trivial.

Earlier this year my employer laid off a sizeable nnumber of staff and how did we all find out? A quick search through google gave us information regarding numbers to be laid off. Even on the day itself, our CEO sent a company wide email which didnt give as much detail as the BBC were reporting. Its shocking to think that even with important messages staff play second fiddle to external sources.

The new CEO promised to shake up how staff are communicated to by becoming more open, encouraging / demanding his management team are more open and approachable and talking to us like adults not children. A couple of months on and it seems the CEO is true to his word with a number of refreshing emails being sent company wide and same day responses to staff questions. Hopefully this will continue and everyone will be pulling in the same direction.

 Alot or at least it seems that way. Tech Crunch reported that Facebook is looking to get funding using a value of $2bn. Lets just dwell on that point. $2bn for what? A company that has not turned profit yet? $2bn for the potential to make money from the reported 200m users??

 Having that many users is a great achievement but no revenue streams have been found that are strong enough to bring Facebook back into the black. According to Tech Crunch Facebook is burning $20m a month in cash so that $2bn Valuation must be based on the the brand and its potential. $2bn for a name, thats a little excessive.

 Five years on, not one cent in profit and over $500m in investment. The future may not be that rosy unless Facebook can find how to monetize their offering. There are a number of different approaches Facebook could take from a self driven advertising based model, advertising tie ups with someone like Google, charge for the service or become a platform and let others use the service to sell applications or products and take a small percentage. The jury is out but the clock is ticking. A company can only survive so long burning $20m a month.

This blog was never supposed to be a place for me to whinge or complain about the Blackberry Storm but needs must at the moment. Today marked the launch of the Blackberry App World, their version of Apples App Store but before I explain the events of today let me give you a little background information. The Storm was heralded as the next big thing with endless potential etc etc etc but since its December 08 launch there have been many problems with the phone and the distinct lack of an application store has held the phone back in a big way causing RIM and Vodafone to loose ground on one of their main rivals. I’d signed up to the Blackberry site to make sure I was notified as soon as their App World was available. I had given up reading articles about why there was yet another delay to its launch.

Imagine my surprise, turning on my phone this morning, out of the blue I receive an email saying the App World was now open and available for download. Bleary eyed, still half asleep, I followed the links and started the download and installation whilst getting ready for work. Buzzing with excitement I eagerly awaited a new chapter in this phones life and stared at the screen as I clicked on the icon for the app. What did I see, an error message thats what,

“Upgrade your service to a plan that includes browsing and discover a world of possibilities at Blackberry App World. Contact your service provider for more details.”

AARRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!! If the phone had been a little bit cheaper than it was I’d have launched it out of the window and gone straight down to an O2 shop and bought an Iphone.

After trying various things to solve the problems without any looked I headed for Google to find out what was going on. It turns out that everyone in the UK using a Storm was having the same problem. As the App World (AW) is only available in the US, Canada and the UK you’d have thought they would have made sure that the app worked.

Speaking to Vodafone they claimed it wasnt a problem with the plan that people are on as users were able to browse just not run the app. Vodafone werent even aware that the application was coming out today. That shocked me. How that can be the case? Vodafone have exclusive rights to the Storm and therefore you’d have thought they would have been working with RIM to make sure they were ready for the launch.

Vodafone’s online forums were inundated with complaints about the issue and after earlier stating that Vodafone dont support the app they very quickly clarified their position in a post as shown below.

“The reason I said we don’t support it is the same as with any other third party application. Vodafone can only ever offer support for everything that’s included on a handset when it’s launched, or Vodafone approved services released after launch. It’d be simply impossible for us to offer support on all third party products, in fact it’d be similar to contacting Microsoft if you were having problems setting up a piece of software not made by them on your PC.

That said, I’m certain we’ll be able to offer unofficial support for App World, much like we do with any other services we can. I’m the first to hold my hand up and say I didn’t know this was coming out today, but I’ve since been looking into this and have escalated the issue to the relevant party. One thing I can say for sure is that this isn’t a Vodafone account issue as the error message suggests, so I’d recommend you save time by not calling us as suggested, as there’s nothing we can do right now to fix this. RIM are investigating this now, and so I’d recommend you all click Options in the top right corner, then track this topic, to receive an update once we’ve more news.” (http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/index.php?s=67d3c0413118b25af2d42bcf6333de1c&showtopic=21986&st=20)

What an oversight. Vodafone are reliant on the Storm as their supposed flagship handset. Rim were reliant on the App World to start to compete or at least try to compete with Iphones App Store so for both parties to make a shocking mistake as this is beyond belief.

Its no wonder we have been waiting 4 months for a firmware upgrade RIM and Vodafone obviously dont talk to each other.

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• BlackBerry App World has landed (thaibrother.com)