Every silver lining has a cloud, well it seems to in Vodafones case. This morning Vodafone announced that it will be selling the latest models of the Iphone, the 3G and 3Gs in both Ireland and the UK. The cloud came later in the announcement when Vodafone stated that it will begin selling the phone in early 2010. Why is that such an issue? Vodafone will not be able to sell the handset over the busiest period of the year, Xmas. Orange on the other hand can.

How the hell did this happen? I think it could be down to one of two reasons:

1. Apple wanted to limit the supply of Iphones in order to ensure prices were kept high over what is the busiest time of the year. As Apple had Vodafone over a barrel, given the important that Vodafone places on the device, Apple could dictate terms.
2. There are further announcements to come. Vodafone are massive, have more clout that any other global operator and have been burnt before. The Newbury based company would not let Apple prevent it from selling the phone over Xmas unless it was getting something else in return. There may be a new handset out next year, exclusive to Vodafone that Apple doesnt want leaked until Orange and O2 have sold lots of their stocks of the current models.

Only time will tell if my guesses / predictions are right but there is a little bit of method behind my madness.

This morning the Telegraph reported that Vodafone will announce, at 9am that they have also secured the rights to sell the Iphone.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/6241786/Vodafone-will-sell-the-iPhone-in-the-UK.html 

What do football managers and Vodafone have in common? Nothing and thats the problem.

There are is one golden rule when opperating in the transfer market:

Never announce publicly that you are interested in a player. Why? Because the selling club will take advantage of the situation and put the price up. What does this have to do with the Newbury based company?

Vodafone have bleated on about the Iphone ever since they missed out on getting the rights to sell the Iphone in the UK. Vittorio Colao has said that the company has been penalised by the situation and the Vodafone Finance director stated that the company would like to offer the phone in more of its markets. These were Vodafone’s fatal mistakes which have lead to Orange claiming rights to sell the latest models of the Iphone.

Apple will have no doubt seen the headlines and reports hinting at the importance that the company places on the device and will have raised the bar and increased the number of hoops it asked Vodafone to jump through in order to join O2 in the exclusive club.

O2 are the biggest mobile operator in the UK and they have the Iphone.

Once T-Mobile and Orange merge they will be the biggest operator and they will also be selling the latest models of the Apple Iphone, the 3G and 3GS.

Vodafone, once the market leader and frequent innovator has on numerous occasions stated how much of a negative impact not selling the Iphone has had on customer numbers. The latest announcement from Orange will be a very painful kick in the teeth to Vodafone.

When O2 secured the Iphone, Vodafone should have learnt its lesson. After publicly stating its regret on the decision not to pursue the Iphone with more than a token gesture approach, the company now finds itself in a very uncomfortable position.

No longer the major player in the market, Vodafone faces increased competition from outside the industry e.g. Google, and has a brand that needs a serious overhaul in order to get across to the younger, cooler, bigger spending customers. It is clear that all Vodafone’s eggs well and truly lie in the basket called Vodafone 360, the recently announced web services offering.

When you consider that the Iconic phone has been named at the top of the coolest brands list for the UK with Apple holding a total of 3 of the top 5 places its mad to see that Vodafone hasnt gone after a major link up with everything it had. Lets not forget, Vodafone is massive. No other mobile telecoms company comes close so why Vodafone hasnt used its size to out muscle the opposition wreaks of stupidity of the highest order.

One question that remains, in other markets where Vodafone has exclusivity on the Iphone, is big red mullering its competitors the same way O2 has been in the UK. The answer is a definite no.

The Services at a glance

• Vodafone People – Social Network integration, auto sync, the most innovative address book out there.
• My Web – Think customisable Vodafone live with a few extra bells and whistle
• App Store – Mainly web browser based apps that enable them to work on any OS, great news for developers but it remains to be seen what sort of apps will be on offer.
• Music – A couple of different offerings from DRM free downloads to subscription based services. 
• Navigation – Think Satnav merged with Facebook. The ablitity to see where people are which brings its own benefits.

The services link into each other very well and more functionality will no doubt be added as time goes by.

Further insights into the individual services will follow in the next few days.

The handsets

Vodafone announced that there will be two dedicated handsets with far more to follow also pointing out that the new services are compatible on a large number of handsets.

The SamsungH1 is the higher spec’ed of the two phones with the M1 being aimed towards the lower price points with a reduced feature list.

Samsung M1

•  3.2″ TFT touch screen 400×200 resolution
• 3 mega pixel camera with auto focus
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• 1gb memory with memory card slot

A solid spec list for the lesser of the two handsets. Pricing this handset right will be very important as it will be in direct competition with the HTCMagic and other Samsung handsets that are all proving very popular.

Sansung H1

• 3.5″ AMOLED Touch Screen 800×400 resolution
• 5 mega pixel camera with auto focus, flash and 8 x digital zoom
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• 16gb memory with memory card slot

For a handset that is being marketed at the high end the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 device doesnt really excite even though Vodafone has been working with Samsung for the last year or so. Given that the Sony Ericsson Satio has a 12.1 mega pixel camera, the NokiaN97 has 32gb on board this H1 device struggles to turn me on but the hardware isnt supposed to. Think about the Iphone, its not the hardware that excites its the usability and the fact it works that presses peoples buttons.

These two phones have been built with the Vodafone 360 services in mind. Having seen demo’s of the phones in action Vodafone and Samsung seem to have nailed the usability with dedicated buttons for key features that give quick access to the things that matter.

The services look great but it remains to be seen whether my three concerns will remain:

1. The benefit of Vodafone 360, especially Vodafone People relies on you and your friends using it. There’s no point you having all the capabilities in the world to connect with your friends when they dont use the services and therefore cant connect back.
2. Vodafone 360 provides a suite of services that give the user all they need which is great but it seems a bit ‘all or nothing’ with users activities being boxed in and contained to Vodafone’s chosen services etc. Yes Apple do this to some extent but Apple services were up and running way before the iphone came along.
3. Seeing Vodafone People in action, I fear that the navigation albeit innovative, will confuse comes across cluttered. If I want to ring someone I can do it in one or two taps on my HTC magic, it remains to be seen whether the funky interface allows the same.

Vodafone Live was ground breaking and put Vodafone well out in front. Vodafone 360 looks very good but has alot of competition and it remains to be seen whether people will hand in their HTC Magic, Iphone or Blackberrys in order to trade up to the Samsung H1. Vodafone has been clever in that the services will not only work on the Samsung devices but many current handsets so customers will not need to change. Useful given that many people are on 24 month contracts with the Iphone 3Gs. Secondly you dont even need to be a Vodafone customer to use it. Genius but its complicated to work out how Vodafone will get revenue from O2 customers for example. Oh and will Apple, Google and Blackberry allow the app in their stores.

Vodafone announced in the press yesterday (a day before telling their staff, unless you read work emails on the weekend that is) that it was about to undertake a big re-branding exercise. Now before you get excited that Vodafone was about to do something big like change its colour or its logo, its not, its changing its tag line. Supposedly this will come with a new, more exciting, more youthful advertising campaign to help Vodafone reposition itself.

The old tag line, ‘Make the most of now’ made alot of sense and people understood what it meant. If you were on a bus, train or just hanging around doing nothing, through use of Vodafones you could make your time more interesting and not waste it. The new tag line, that is predictably being described as far more than just a line that will appear on the end Vodafone’s adverts is a little less meaningful.

‘Power to you’ my first impressions were that it sounded like something a civil rights activist would say during speech to rally their protesters. It sounds fluffy and although you know what Vodafone are getting at, ‘Power to you’ just doesnt fit. It feels like salesman speak and with big announcements planned this week (24th Sept) Vodafone will have to go some to prevent it sounding like the company is flogging some dodgy old motor or the company will be flogging a dead horse.

Vodafone have just launched a service called Real Time Top 40 which the company describes as “This is the first-ever interactive real-time top 40 chart for music lovers.” But thats not really the case is it? More on that later.

The chart allows people to say who they are currently listening to by tweeting #RealTimeTop40 . All the tweets are then compiled in a chart within minutes to give an current view on the charts.

Its nothing complicated but pretty clever especially when you consider the site then links the user to the Vodafone Music store where they can buy the tracks and albums that are in the chart.  ChaChing!!£££

The problem is this is only for people who use twitter and for me thats a little shortsighted for a company that is all about connected living. Think of all the ways to communicate there’s the old fashioned text, the slightly more modern email but what about other social sites? Surely they can be involved? Facebookhas some great API’s that have recently been improved and are dying to be exploited.

Twitter is a way of communicating, Facebook is how people connect and share more than just links and photos so Im surprised this new service from Vodafone hasnt gone a little further.

Good start but more to do.

Orange and T-Mobile will merge and create the biggest UK Operator, holding 37% of the market with over 28 million customers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8243226.stm

O2 and Vodafone have always managed to secure deals to offer the best handsets on attractive deals in the UK with Orange and T-Mobile struggling to compete. I hope Im wrong but this decision / ability not to secure Vodafone’s purchase of T-Mobile could have more serious ramifications for Vodafone than the failure to get exclusivity on the Iphone. 

The switch in market power may alter any ongoing discussions between Apple and UK operators on distribution rights for the next generation of the Iphone, rumoured to be a Nano type device released in time for Christmas this year.

The future of the newly formed entity will be interesting to see. Will they continue to focus on the bottom, value end of the market or given their increased bargaining power will they make a play for more lucrative customers? They will have more options, more choice and more power but will they know how to use it?

I own a 4th Generation Ipod Nano which was a Christmas present so is only 9 months old. The other day it started playing up, the buttons stopped working and then the screen went mental showing streaks and two large blobs with nothing of any use displayed.

I popped online and looked into what I could do about it. As the Ipod is only 9 months old I knew it was still under warranty and so wanted to send it to Apple to get it fixed. The process for doing so was very straight forward and I received a UPS back and protective packaging and arranged for UPS to pick up the device. Apple informed me they had received it and would get their engineers to look at it. A good experience so far but then it went downhill when I received the following email from Apple.

“Dear Christopher,

Thank you for choosing AppleCare Service.

Your IPOD NANO (4TH GENERATION) has been inspected by Apple technicians, who have determined that it has been subjected to accidental damage or misuse, which is not covered by the warranty or an Apple service contract. Therefore your product is being returned to you unrepaired. You should expect to receive it within two business days along with a letter that gives details of this assessment. ”

Before I continue I must state that I have not knowingly misused the Ipod and I am  not aware of anytime when the Ipod has been damaged by accident other than once months ago which had no impact on the ipod functioning. Given this, I took serious offense at being told that I am either lying and have knowingly broken the Ipod and want to get Apple to fix it for free

I understand that alot of people probably try to get their Ipods fixed when they have knowingly damaged it but I havent and feel Apple should have a friendlier more customer focused approach to product repairs. If they’d have said that it would cost me a reduced fee of say £30 to fix the item I would probably have paid it but instead I get an ipod back that doesnt work. What’s the point in that? It seems I have no options other than buying a new Ipod.

If they are sending me a letter documenting their findings then why cant they put this information in the email so I know why they are sending the Ipod back. The email strikes me as non negotiable which given my above statement about not knowing of any point recently where the Ipod has been misused or damaged, I feel shockingly treated.

Now Im now Apple evangelist but I do like their work, however this whole experience has made me question whether I will buy another of their products. Ipods arent cheap, in fact they are more expensive than other MP3 players out there. I expected my Nano to last me a good number of years. My pervious Mp3 player, a Sony NW-HD5 lasted years and still works. It was only replaced by my Nano because I wanted something smaller.