LATAM Telecom

It has been almost a year since the launch of the iPhone in the USA and only a few months since its introduction to the European maret. In this short period of time we have seen AT&T and Apple play with the pricing of the handset. Pricing for the service itself has not changed except for an additional package not offered in the beginning. In contrast, the European market sales of the device have not lived to expectations which shouldn't be surprising considering the price of the handset. The US and European markets offer interesting lessons for pricing the iPhone in Latin America: Both Apple and AT&T claim that the iPhone is selling in the U.S. up to expectations but overseas is a different matter . Everything seems to indicate the price is too high for the European market. Latin America is a low ARPU region but end users do not hesitate to buy high end devices. However, pricing the handset higher than a laptop is probably a big mistake. The number of users who are willing...

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 ...