LATAM Telecom

We had heard that both America Movil and Telefonica were in talks with Apple to launch the iPhone in Latin America (see here ), with operations in Brazil and Mexico as the prime candidates. It was expected that negotiations were not going to be easy, both companies and particularly America Movil are well known to be tough negotiators. Apple, however, has given no indication that it will change its business strategy, which consists of no exclusive agreements with global operators, which means it can launch with America Movil in Mexico and with Telefonica in Brazil). Apple's strategy is to have separate negotiations country/operator and exclusivity for one single operator per country. In addition, Apple is not backing down from the revenue share deal it has with its current partners, despite tough negotiations in Japan, China and other countries (see here ). It is now reported by Folha Online that Telefonica and Apple are in the final stages of negotiation to launch the iPhone in Bra...

John Delaney and Vincent Poulbere from Ovum bring to our attention how mobile advertising can help operators face their two biggest challenges: declining ARPUs and expanding their reach into media. An interesting initiative by GSMA announced at Barcelona was the creation of a Working Group to define common metrics and measurement processes for mobile advertising. Vodafone, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Orange and 3 are the five members of this group. Ovum mentions other activities at Barcelona that clearly show enthusiasm for bringing advertising into the mobile world such as round table discussions and initiatives by different vendors including Comverse Mobile Advertising Solution, Nokia's Media Network, Openwave's Contextual Advertising and Amdocs' mobile advertising solution. While we applaud their efforts, we should note that operators have still a lot of work ahead to catch up and bring the web to the mobile world. Internet advertising has come a long way but it remains unchar...

Brough's COMMUNICATIONS Blog from 12/08/2007 talks about Ringback Tones Adoption Rates , a service that has been very successful in Asia as a money maker and music distribution channel: Nearly 55% of Korean subscribers have ringback tone service; China Mobile has close to 50% adoption. In contrast, adoption rates in Europe were below 10%; the US has ~12M subscribers or 5%. What about Latin America? Based on our experience with operators in the region, the best cases have about 2% service penetration. Brough pays special attention to the fact that operators in Korea and China have more than 20 content providers just for this service. In contrast, the typical operator in the US or EU is usually the only source of information or content. In Latin America, with the exception of some early adopters like Movistar Chile , most operators launched the service during 2006. For the most part, penetration has been low and the uptake slow, even the most successful cases like Millicom Colombia ...