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Virgin Mobile rolls out MARBL from Kyocera
See, that wasn't such a bad wait, no was it? A few weeks after we told you about the MARBL coming down the pike for Virgin Mobile from frequent partner Kyocera, the cheap flip is now available for public consumption from retailers everywhere. At $30 sans contract (remember, Virgin is a prepaid MVNO), the MARBL doesn't offer terribly much in the way of features, but it does manage to pack a speakerphone, internal antenna, and color display -- and hey, it doesn't look half bad. Just as long as you're cool with the name, Motorola, we are, too.
Virgin Mobile USA to offer Yahoo! mobile services
Virgin Mobile USA, considered to be the first MVNO in America, has landed Yahoo! as of last week to get the web portal's mobile services available to its 4.6 million wireless customers. Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger will be first up to bat, with those mobile services coming as downloadable applications for several Virgin Mobile handsets this month. In addition, Virgin Mobile will be pre-loading Yahoo! Mobile applications on many of its phones starting now, according to both companies.
Virgin Mobile adding another cheap flip, "Marbl"
The Oystr looks poised to give way to the Marbl in the "what $30 will buy you" department on Virgin Mobile -- the US' prepaid Virgin Mobile, that is, not its DVB-H-havin' cousin across the pond. The Kyocera-sourced clamshell follows Virgin's typical keep-it-simple strategy with a minimal internal display and clean exterior (read: no cam or external display to be found). That said, the phone doesn't look half bad -- and seeing how this is prepaid, that $30 is going to get you this thing outright. No word on an exact release date, but Virgin's site lists it at "Coming Soon" and -- in our experience, at least -- waits are measured in days once a carrier admits that they're going to launch a model.[Thanks, Charlene]
Penny texting pays off for Virgin Mobile, hits 4.6 million customers
Virgin Mobile recently announced that at the end of 2006 it had 4.6 million customers underneath its belt, which isn't half bad seeing that the company has only been around less than half a decade. The firm attributes the recent subscriber growth to penny text messaging, its hybrid pricing plans, and Sugermama -- a one-of-a-kind service in the US that allows customers to get airtime credit for watching advertisements. Of course, that uber-cheap texting rate is going directly against the waves created by the other, more prominent carriers here in the US, and it's not too shocking to see consumers flocking to lower-priced add-ons when everyone else uses these areas to pad their profit margins. Nevertheless, it's becoming increasingly difficult out there for an MVNO to make it, so kudos to VM for holding out this long, and look for a few more subscribers to come your way when fast-food value meals end up being cheaper than a two-way SMS conversation.
Virgin Mobile starts recycling program
Not unlike Apple and Dell, Virgin Mobile USA is getting into the recycling business -- sort of. Their new program, announced yesterday, provides buyers of Virgin's prepaid phones with a prepaid envelope inside the box to return an old phone in. As part of its new partnership with ReCellular, your unwanted handsets, like the vintage Kyocera K9 or classic Motorola StarTAC, will be refurbished and then sold or donated. And so you won't feel so bad at the thought of someone else using last year's model, all the sale proceeds will go to helping homeless youth, which we're hoping will restore your faith a bit in phone donation programs. It should be noted though, Virgin isn't the only carrier being a good samaritan with what might be otherwise discarded devices -- Verizon and T-Mobile have also been spotted distributing mailers with new purchases.
Kyocera brings K325 "Cyclops" to Virgin Mobile
Looking perhaps to move a little upmarket from the low-end Oystr, Virgin's new Kyocera-supplied "Cyclops" clamshell adds a couple key features that should appeal to the gearheads in the prepaid crowd. Besides generally looking a little fancier than its pearly sibling, the Cyclops puts its money where its mouth is by rocking a 1.3-megapixel shooter, a 160 x 128 display, and a speakerphone. The big draw here, though, appears to be the introduction of Virgin's new Virgin Mobile Audio Messaging (VAM) which allows subscribers -- rocking compatible handsets, of course -- to exchange brief voice messages the same way they'd send SMSes. As with Nuance's voice-to-text service, we're a bit skeptical that this is really gonna catch on, but who knows what kinds of services the kiddies are into these days?
UTStarcom Slice gets official for Virgin Mobile
Rumor has it the Slice has been floating around a Wal-Mart here and a Radio Shack there for at least a week or two now, but UTStarcom and Virgin are just now getting around to announcing the slimphone's availability all official-like, and the companies are quick to point out the Slice's main selling point: the candybar is now the thinnest phone (10mm) available in the US without contract. Of course, other critical points to make would be the phone's attractive out-the-door price of $50, while feature-conscious users will still appreciate the MP3 ringtone support with 32MB of storage, reasonable 128 x 128 color display, and that endlessly imitated RAZR-style keypad. Look for the Slice now in stores with online available following on November 2.
UTStarcom serves "Slice" to Virgin Mobile
Though it's known simply as the PCS-1400 to UTStarcom, Virgin Mobile has a history of christening its phones with creative names, and the trend continues here: enter the "Slice." The phone looks a bit like UTStarcom's previously seen UT1200 for GSM networks but rocks CDMA instead (obviously), bringing 10mm-thick slimphone goodness to prepaid users on the cheap -- just $50. Specs are pretty much what you might expect for a $50 phone, with a single-band 1900MHz radio, 128 x 128 display, 32MB of internal storage, and a speakerphone, but no camera or Bluetooth to be found. No word on an official availability date for the Slice, but it looks like Circuit City will be happy to sell you one as we speak.[Thanks, Gusto and Jeremy]Read - Circuit CityRead - Virgin Mobile Slice support pageRead - UTStarcom
Virgin Mobile takes top prepaid honors in J.D. Powers survey
They may not be offering the Lobster 700, but Virgin Mobile's US outpost can lay claim to one thing: they've bested all of their peers in J.D. Powers' latest survey of prepaid services through national carriers and MVNOs. The survey of 4,000 current customers measured satisfaction with call quality, company image, account management, initial activation, service plan options, and customer service, with Virgin scoring 751 on a 1,000-point scale. Coming in a close second was Verizon with their Inpulse service, scoring 736, followed by T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, and TracFone, while Cingular's GoFone and Alltel both scored under the average of 717. Perhaps more interesting than the rankings, though, was the finding that customers of MVNOs (like Virgin) ranked their services higher in account management and cost, while direct services (like T-Mobile) fared better in areas like company image and call quality. Anyway, our congratulations go out to Virgin on that shiny new trophy for the mantel, but honestly, we'd gladly trade it for a Lobster any day of the week.[Via The Wireless Report]
HTC Trilogy christened "Lobster 700" for Virgin Mobile
No, not our Virgin Mobile, folks. The UK's Virgin Mobile will be getting HTC's Trilogy, which we knew; now, the retail model's officially been named the "Lobster 700," a moniker that seems strangely appropriate (though we can't really put our finger on why). As you may recall, the Trilogy is essentially a Faraday with the welcome addition of DAB, though at the expense of a rather prominent hump on the phone's right side. Now that the phone's case has been mercifully recolored, it appears that release is imminent, with some shops reporting availability next month. No word on eventual US availability, though we might be putting the proverbial cart before the horse -- let's get us some live DAB networks first, shall we?
Virgin Mobile keeps it simple with Kyocera "Oystr"
Want Virgin Mobile service? Got 30 bucks? Kyocera's got you covered. The 3.5oz back-to-basics Oystr -- no "e" -- offers a color internal display, speakerphone, "Superphonic" ringtones, and that's about it. Some of us might be quickly overcome with a bad case of feature starvation, but at least the pearl white clamshell (hence the name) doesn't look half bad -- and for an honest $30 with no contract, we'll forego the typical grousing about the lack of external display.[Thanks, Roy]
Hands-on with the HTC Monet (Trilogy)
Typically, we believe there are no excuses for smartphones to sport giant, unbecoming humps, but we do have at least two exceptions to the rule: in-built WiFi, and support for one mobile TV standard or another. The Monet certainly falls into the latter category, and it may fall into both since its guts are Faraday-based, and indeed, the tumor on the Monet's side is monstrous. The phone should be dropping on Virgin Mobile's UK network any time now, but meanwhile, Sogi has taken an up-close look at the Monet in Dopod trim. After going through the Babelfish wringer, the review itself doesn't mean much, but golly, the pictures sure are purty. The Monet -- as we said, basically a repackaged Faraday plus mobile TV -- packs a 2.2-inch QVGA display, MicroSD slot, and Windows Mobile 5.0. See more after the break.[Via Smartphone Thoughts]
Xero Mobile to license ad system
As our mamas used to tell us, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Those are wise words right now for any company, investor, or individual with an interest in Xero Mobile, brought to you by some of the same winners that brought you Gizmondo. We'd assumed these folks would've folded by now, but Xero claims to be on target for a January 2007 launch of their free, ad-based MVNO for college students (sound familiar?). In the meantime, they've gotta make an honest buck somehow, so they've begun licensing their nonexistent service to foreign companies with "expressions of interest" in launching Xero in their local markets. We hope this madness comes to an end before the world has to witness another work of art needlessly destroyed by crooked execs, but even in the unlikely event Xero makes it to see 2007, at least Virgin is a step ahead on the business model.
Phalanx of 34 new MVNOs on the way
If you haven't found an MVNO to suit your taste among the 213 now in operation worldwide, just wait a bit, 'cause it looks there's another 34 ready to launch soon, according to MVNODirectory.com. Among the new offerings include an MVNO from Ireland's Eircom, who decided to settle for MVNO after being turned downed for a spectrum license, as well as a couple that we've heard about already; Xero Mobile, for one, which hopes to snag some of that bored-but-poor student market (of course there's already at least one other MVNO targeting the same market), and Virgin Mobile, who are continuing to expand since being the first to launch an MVNO way back in 1999 -- they're poised to move into China and India next. If things keep going at this rate, there'll as many MVNOs as there were over-hyped, profitless dotcomsback in the day, and we all know how well that worked out.[Via The Wireless Report]
SugarMama: earn Virgin Mobile minutes by watching ads
Yeah, we've seen this system before. It didn't work for Gizmondo's Tiger Telematics when it was called Smart Adds, we didn't think it was going to work for the company's unofficial spinoff, Xero Mobile (started by the CEO of Tiger's Smart Adds division), but now Richy Branson wants you to to stop paying for (some of) your minutes by watching youth-oriented ads. Welcome to SugarMama, Virgin Mobile's ads-for-minutes system which gives you airtime in exchange for viewing a video ad or interacting with text ad, and then providing feedback to the advertisers (presumably to make sure you actually performed the act of watching or reading said ad). We don't yet know exactly how many ads it'll take to reach the monthly ceiling of 75 minutes "earned," but what would really impress us is if you could earn your whole minute plan this way.
Virgin Mobile launches Switch_Back QWERTY phone
It might not be any more good looking now that it's finally being released to public consumption, but Virgin Mobile's new Switch_Back handset by Kyocera still seems to be a solid choice for QWERTY-inclined text messaging fiends. Along with the "hidden" QWERTY keypad (it's called a clamshell, guys), the phone sports internal and external displays, and has a VGA camera. Otherwise there isn't much going on here. The handset will go for $150, and should be available in stores nationwide.
Virgin Mobile poised to launch MVNO in China
Interfax China is reporting that Virgin Mobile is close to signing a partnership with wireless carrier China Unicom that would make the UK-based company the first foreign MVNO in post-WTO China. Although Virgin would still require approval from the Chinese government, which carefully scrutinizes all proposed foreign business presences, the company will benefit from past deals in which Spain's Telefonica and Germany's Vodafone have made invesments in domestic telecom firms. Virgin already has offices in Shanghai, and CEO Richard Branson recently told reporters to expect a Chinese launch this fall, so it would seem pretty likely that this venture, which is well over a year in the making, has the necessary government support to proceed.
NTL makes bid for Virgin Mobile UK buyout
Through various combinations of offers involving weird fractions of shares and certain amounts of "pence," NTL has reached an agreement of with the Independent Board of Virgin Mobile Holdings to buy out the entire Virgin Mobile MVNO. The straight up cash offer is GBP 962.4 million ($1.68 billion USD), 372 pence per share. NTL is also offering 0.23245 shares of their stock for Virgin Mobile shares, or 0.18596 NTL shares plus 67 pence each. Virgin Mobile, which operates on the T-Mobile network, is the UK's largest MVNO, at 4.3 million subscribers. NTL is also entering into an agreement that allows them to brand their TV and fixed-line phone services as Virgin. We can't say we've exactly crunched all the numbers, so it's hard to give a thumbs up or down on the fiscal validity of the offer, but we're cooking up a sweet graph in Excel right now -- drop shadows and everything.
SMS-related injuries becoming more prevalant in the UK
It seems that the British aren't taking full advantage of the handy T9 predictive text entry feature on their phones, as Reuters is reporting that a record 3.8 million Brits suffered from a repetitive stress injury caused by fervent texting in the past year. Furthermore, 38% more people experienced a messaging-related RSI in 2005 than five years earlier, and 10% of the population send up to 100 texts every day. These statistics come from a survey commissioned by Virgin Mobile, who may live to regret it once they get hit with the first wave of SMS injury-related lawsuits. It looks like the souped-up XT9 couldn't have debuted at a better moment in history.[Via textually]
UTStarcom CDM-7025 revealed by FCC
The kids over at phoneArena just spotted another unannounced phone in the piles of FCC docs. This time, it's a low-end UTStarcom clamshell branded with both Verizon (model CDM-7025) and Sprint PCS (CDM-7025SP) logos. The phones feature a 65K color display and partially retractable antenna with the Verizon model throwing in AMPS support for good ol' "advanced" analog backup action.
