Vodafone Czech Republic ARPU at USD 30
Vodafone Czech Republic achieved 49,000 net customers additions between July – September 2009, the largest quarterly growth in 2009. Net customer growth for January-September was 92,000 users.
The operator has over 2.984 million mobile subscribers as on 30 September, up 5.5 percent year-on-year.
Postpay subscribers stood at 1.54 million approx.
Mobile ARPU reported is CZK 522 or USD 30 approx.
Aside from key Stats: Vodafone CZ is promoting a free MMS offer where it will offer 77 free MMS messages per month for the next four months for its subscribers. Customers need to apply for the bundle, which will continue after the free period with a monthly fee.
Globul Bulgaria launches discounted bundle offers
Bulgaria’s Globul announced that it will offer a 5% reduction to mobile subscribers who also take out the Globul Landline service. also a 10% reduction will be offered to those who take the Mobile Internet Package as well.
Vodafone fined for spamming in Australia
VODAFONE Hutchison Australia and Coke have become been caught by an anti-spam law, prompting the Australian government to re-iterate that it will strongly impose the six-year-old law.
Vodafone agreed to pay $110,000 after it sent 100,000 text messages to Vodafone customers last October as part of a marketing campaign for Coca-Cola. Where the law is breached, the regulator has several options, including a formal warning, an enforceable undertaking, fines of up to $110,000 a day, and Federal Court action in the most extreme cases.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority investigated whether the messages breached the 2003 Spam Act because they did not give recipients a means to unsubscribe or contact the sender.
The messages was: ”Take a hint from your PC and reboot. You’ll work faster. Reclaim your lunch hour with a friend. Escape with a Coca-Cola lunch break.”
The payment was part of an enforceable undertaking by Vodafone Hutchison, which owns Vodafone, and the marketing companies New Dialogue and Big Mobile.
Vodafone Hutchison agreed to pay but it stated that it would continue marketing campaigns via mobile phones.
Interestingly, last month the Federal Court fined companies and individuals $15.75 million for spam text messages targeted at users of a dating website.
Google acquires Gizmo5 to take on Skype. Deal valued at US$ 30 Million.
Google has been on the prowl acquiring some strategic companies in what could be termed as the next frontier. After acquring Admob, Techcrunch has reported that it is to acquire VOIP Start-up Gizmo5 for about USD 30 Million.
The deal comes after Skype successfully negotiated a deal with its former owners Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, to maintain full possession of the technology it requires to operate.
Gizmo5, operated by Michael Robertson (of mp3.com fame), was reportedly in discussions with Skype about a potential acquisition should the company lose its legal battle with its former founders. But since that dela has gone through now, Skype no longer requires Gizmo5 as a potential back-up plan.
Google will now set itself up as a VOIP provider to rival Skype, which holds the vast majority of the market and accounts for 8% of all international voice traffic.
While Google already offers a feature for users to speak over the internet via Google Talk/Voice, it does not have the ability to make incoming or outbound calls to “real” telephones – a service Gizmo5 has already established. Interestingly, Gizmo5 has already been integrated with Google Voice, a service that replaces a user’s telephone numbers with a single number for all devices.
Google acquires Admob for USD 750 Million.
Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile advertising company, for $750 million.
Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, DFJ and Northgate Capital will see a huge upside from this investment.
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.
AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.
After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:
- Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.
- Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
- Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
- Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.
Google has written its own blog post announcing the Admob deal:
iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years..
And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]
Google has also shown in its press section, what it has currently vis-a-vis where admob is popular today:
Google -Admob
As Google points out, the deal follows similar acquisitions by traditional online companies looking to move into mobile: AOL bought Third Screen Media more than two years ago, Yahoo picked up Actionality and Microsoft bought ScreenTonic.
