Next week Vodafone España will begin competing in the budget phone space. Not only will they offer a smartphone with top features and proprietary brand (Vodafone Smart), but also will launch an offensive campaign unprecedented in the Spanish prepaid cellphone market. However you look at it, Vodafone?s move opens a new battlefront in a territory hardly explored by the main players.
Next week Vodafone España will begin competing in the budget phone space. Not only will they offer a smartphone with top features and proprietary brand (Vodafone Smart), but also will launch an offensive campaign unprecedented in the Spanish prepaid cellphone market. However you look at it, Vodafone?s move opens a new battlefront in a territory hardly explored by the main players.
Until now, those who used prepaid phone cards were all but forgotten in the mobile telephone market. The most attractive offers only benefited people with contracts while prepaid users wished for lower rates from budget companies.
Living on borrowed time, Vodafone is changing its strategy in order to retain and capture business within the low-cost segment of its clientele. They are offering a device with the Android operating system (by Google) to the public for a price of 69 euros. The device, built by Huawei, provides access to the Internet and social networking. It will have the same communication possibilities offered by top-model mobile devices.
Clients used to having any kind of smartphone and special offers will likely still want to purchase telephone contracts. But Vodafone?s is betting on users interested in controlling how much they spend on a mobile device, but without quotas or compromises.
Vodafone?s objective is two-sided. They want to capture close to 6.5 million consumers who currently used prepaid cards and, at the same time, incentivize data consumption by providing easy, comfortable and inexpensive access to wide-band mobile.
Edited in English by Brandon Dyches and Jose L. de Haro (for comments contact: joseluisdeharo@eleconomista.es)
