So, Vodafone finally got round to launching their pricing strategy late last week. And very aggressive it is too. Oh, not in the sense of undercutting the competition of other 3G operators (limited at the moment anyway) – in fact, they’re being pretty gentlemanly all round in the apparent desire not to rock the boat.
But, very aggressive if your company has any designs to be player in the 3G world of mobile content or services. Why? By allowing free browsing of their portal (sometimes called “walled garden”) they’ve basically made it almost impossible for off-portal products to be sold. So, you need to partner with Vodafone (ie pay them) or wither on the vine.
As an example, if you’re a Vodafone user and you’d like some current event news or sports results or on your 3G phone, you can get it free on the Vodafone portal or for a fee outside the portal. So not only do you have to go through the rather clumsy off-portal navigation, you have to pay for the privilege.
Or if you want a ringtone, you can get it for the price Vodafone charge or pay to browse what the competition has in-store on the off-chance that it might be better or cheaper.
How much better must the off-portal content be – or how bloody minded must users be? – to chose the off-portal option?
What Vodafone have effectively done is found a way to charge Vodafone customers to look in competitor’s shops, while alowing them to look in theirs free.
Of course, we’ve seen walled gardens before and they’ve never worked in the past. But this approach just might, especially if Vodafone do a half decent job of providing content that people want – to the point that they simply can’t be arsed to go outside.
Russ Beattie makes much the same point
Watching Voda make it clear that they’re going to own the customer completely is pretty amazing. Are you Nokia? You better put our logo on the phone and our menu on the screen. Are you Yahoo? Don’t even think about providing data services, we own the portal and we own the data access charges. Are you other carriers in Europe or Asia? Watch out, because we’re going to market you into the ground. Are you Apple? We’ve got deals with every major music publisher and are offering music downloads, so your iPod is toast.
I wonder if this approach will stand up to unfair competition/anti-trust practices in the various markets they operate in? Because what Vodafone are doing is tilting the playing field so that their competitors need to don crampons and grab ice axes to play against them.
Got to admire them for trying though 
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