Mobile Phone Insurance News

Two veterans of Orange and 3 are planning to launch their own MVNO.

Gareth Jones and Gordon Webber are set to launch the network called: Nutshell and plan to use 3’s network in the UK.

It is thought that the MVNO will target the low end contract market, especially those customers who struggle to pass the credit checks on other networks.

They wish to offer more straightforward tariffs than those on offer from other networks and this has influenced the name.

It is understood that 20:20 Mobile will be the distribution and fulfillment partner. It is not yet known when the MVNO is set to launch.

O2 is preparing to refresh its consumer tariffs with the highlight being a £15 a month iPhone contract and more SIM only tariffs.

It is thought that the company will launch a 2 year £25 a month iPhone tariff including 100 minutes and unlimited Texts. They are also rumoured to be launching a genuine unlimited calls and text offer on a SIM only deal at £65 per month for 18 months.

Talk Talk, Carphone Warehouse’s broadband and home telephony arm which is soon to be operating on its own, has appointed A Novo as its Broadband fulfilment partners for a further 3 years.

Amazon have launched a Kindle Application for Blackberry users. For the time being the application is only available to US users but it is anticipated that the app will be available in the rest of the world given time.

The application is free and enables users to select books to download from a library of 400,000. The boooks cost in the region of $9.99 each.

The development is a canny way of opening up a massive new market place for the Amazons service without having to wait for customers to actually buy a Kindle ebook reader.

Other news - Insurance2go’s new Laptop Insurance product is taking shape and it looks as if it will be launching in March 2010. The product is far more competitive than the previous product available and crucially it will allow customers to insure their iPads when they launch later this year.

The Laptop and netbook market is growing very fast in the UK and looks to be growing almost as fast as the increase in Smartphone sales in the mobile market.

Palm shares in the US fell by 18% after it forecast that revenues from the third quarter would come in between $300 - $320 million. This is down on analysts estimates. Palm also said that sales of their Smartphones has slowed.

The Smartphone market is hugely competitive and since the introduction of the iPhone other manufacturers have struggled.

Virgin Media have announced the first 100Mb ultrafast Broadband service in the UK. Wow. Will certainly turn the heads of those who enjoy downloading movies etc.

Some facts and figures:

Orange in the UK have 6.9 million customers on a contract and a further 10 million on PrePay. They added 260,000 new customers in the final quarter of 2009.

Virgin media have 950,000 customers on a contract and 2.2 million on PrePay, they added 77,100 new customers in the final quarter of 2009.

T Mobile have 4.1 million contract customers, and a sizeable 13.1 miilion on PrePay, they also had a good final quarter adding 393,000 new customers in the final period of 2009.

The figures show that when Orange and T-Mobile merge they will create a telecoms giant in the UK.

The figures show that as more and more people change and purchase Smartphones the growth in sales continues. As we reported yesterday there is an increase in 24 month contracts as people look to get Smartphone cheaply making insurance on these mobile phones really important.

Financial reports out today show that two of Europes largest Telecoms giants have seen a significant drop in profit over the last 12 months.

Deutsche Telecom, the German Telecoms player, has reported a profit of 353m euros for 2009 - a drop of 76% on the previous year.

Whilst France Telecom, owners of Orange, saw profits drop by 26% to 3 bn Euros. France Telecom has had a bumpy year with a series of suicides amongst the workforce who have been complaining of stress and overwork.

Deutsche Telecom ended the year strongly and are optimistic about the next 12 months.

By contrast Orange added 404,000 customers during the quarter ending 31 December 2009, fuelled by ‘high-end multimedia devices’, such as the iPhone.

The operator added 266,000 contract customers, of which 80% were on 24-month contracts. This was compared with 11% on 24-month contracts in Q4 2008.

The drive to more 24 month contracts makes insurance for a mobile phone even more important. If a customer signs up to a contract for 24 months and receives a high end Smartphone included in on the deal they should consider protecting that handset, were they to lose or damage the handset then they would still be liable for the contract…even if this were to happen after just a day. Taking out insurance protects against this.

Carphone have said that staff are happier and salaries are higher since they took the decision to no longer pay commissions.

The company dropped commissions in July of last year and they now reward employees for good services. As a result average salaries have increased.

A Gartner report into the mobile phone industry has been released with some interesting facts and figures.

The number of mobile phones sold Worldwide in 2009 dropped fractionally from 2008. The drop was 0.9% so not hugely significant. However, within those figures there was an important rise in Smartphone sales of 8.4% something that most analyst suggest will continue throughout 2010.

The top five manufacturers saw their marketshare drop. In 2008 the top five accounted for 79.3% of sales whilst in 2009 this figures dropped to 75.3%.

However, within the top five, Samsung and LG increased their market share with Samsung moving from 16.3% to 19.5%, and LG from 8.4% to 10.1%.

These increases came partly at the expense of Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Nokia saw their Worldwide share drop from 38.6% to 36.4%, Motorola from 8.7% to 4.8% and Sony Ericsson 7.6% to 4.5%.

Today sees the launch of Nokia’s X6 that I’m sure they will hope pulls their market share back in the move mature markets. As always www.insurance2go.co.uk will be there ready and waiting with cheap mobile phone insurance to cover anyone with a shiny new Nokia X6 they wish to insure.

O2 the Mobile Phone Network are all set to recruit 300 new staff members now that their self imposed recruitment freeze has come to an end.

Most of the new retail staff will be taken on in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh. The recruitment freeze came about when 300 jobs were lost last year due to a change in working hours. A spokesman also mentioned that economic conditions and underperforming staff also contributed to the job losses. The plan is to recruit for the bigger stores first.

Customers will always be offered insurance when buying their mobile phone at an O2 store. The insurance offered is either £7.50 a month or £10 a month depending on the handset with no free period included. Here at Insurance2Go our insurance is either £4.49 a month (without loss) or £5.99 a month (with loss) AND we give all customers 3 months free in the first year.

Even if customers don’t take insurance with ourselves we would always recommend they shop around online first before signing up in store.

HTC the mobile phone manufacturer that made the ‘Google Phone’ are launching the world’s fastest smartphone.

The phone will be called the ‘Desire’ will go up against the ‘Google Nexus One’ and another model they are launching called the ‘Legend’.  Industry insiders think the ‘Legend’ might be the phone that knocks the iPhone off the top spot. The iPhone of course has been the must have handset since it first launched.

The 2 handsets which were launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona put other releases from the likes of Motorola and Sony Ericsson in the shade. HTC has grown its market share pretty quickly and if it continues to produce good quality smartphones that cost less and perform better than phones from the other manufacturers it looks like it will continue to do so.

It goes without saying that here at Insurance2Go we will be happy to insure the new mobile phones from HTC when they are released in the UK.

The slightly spookily entitled machine to machine (M2M) sector looks set to gorw this year with the announcement that 3 have signed a deal with aql, a mobile messaging and communication specialist.

The deal is to provide m2m connections via the operator’s 3G network. The applications for such a technology include in-car diagnostics, lone worker safety and video surveillance. It is hoped that the deal generates 40 partners in the first 12 months.

Phones 4u is set to offer the Nokia X6 16GB as an exclusive deal preloaded with an application from the online music community b@TV. b@TV delivers content streamed from music clubs, DJ sets, dance festivals and venues from across the globe. Exciting stuff, insurance2go.co.uk will of course provide mobile phone insurance for anyone wishing to protect their Nokia X6 16GB.

The BBC, who launched a new application at last week’s Mobile Congress, have been critical of the fragmentation of the applications market. The market now has apps for the iPhone, for Google’s Android software, symbian and soon the new standard launched by a group of companies world wide at the smae congress. The beeb said it was used to broadcasting in one format which can be used by all parties, the mobile industry it seems is different.

Ericsson, the Swedish telecoms equipment manufacturer, said it is keeping the faith with its mobile phone making venture with Sony. The company have said they expect it to be profitable by the end of the year.

TomTom have reported 4th quarter results with profits of 73 million euros compared with a loss of 989 euros a  year ago.

Daisy, the B2B telecoms group, have made another aquisition, this this time it’s BNS Telecoms for £13.75 million. The deal will strengthen the company’s VoIP capability.

Acer, the computer giant, who this week have launched 5 mobile phones at the Mobile World congress, are targeting 5 -7% of the world mobile market by 2012. An ambitious target given they effectively begin from nowhere in a hugely competitive makretplace. As always insurance2go.co.uk will be there to offer mobile phone insurance at great value to all new Acer users.

Facebook, the world’s biggest social network has revealed details of a stripped-down, text-only version of its mobile site called Facebook Zero. The low-bandwidth site is aimed at people viewing Facebook on their mobile and will launch “in the coming weeks”. The social network recently said that more than 100 million people now access Facebook from their phone.

Sony Ericsson have announced at the Mobile World Congress that they are launching 5 new handsets. The handsets will be the X10, the X10 Mini, the X10 Mini Pro, the Vivaz and the Vivaz Pro.

It goes without saying that as soon as they are available to customers living here in the Uk they will be available to insure at Insurance2Go. We only have 2 prices no matter what the phone, it’s either £4.49 without loss or £5.99 with loss. Customer can pay monthly or annually, either way they get 3 months insurance for free in the first year.

As well as announcing the new handsets Sony Ericsson made it clear they were expecting 2010 to be a tough year. They made reference to the global economic situation, the Orange/ T-Mobile merger, spectrum refarming and the digital bill going through Parliament.