Vodafone Tries to Extend Its Brand to Mobile Phones
Last month we mentioned a series of articles in The Wall Street Journal about changes in the handset business. The series pointed out that the traditional players are facing growing competition from new smaller rivals. Well it seems that handset makers are not only under pressure from rivals but increasingly from their customers. Today's WSJ reports that Vodafone is planning on launching custom handsets tied to new services. Custom handsets allow them to not only differentiate themselves but provide a consistent user experience across handsets and make it easier to roll out new services. While handset makers are working with Vodafone on this project its a major change in the nature of the relationship between carriers and equipment makers. Equipment makers used to push devices and services to carriers. But as services are becoming more complicated and revenues more dependent on non-voice products, carriers are pushing back. Vodafone isn't the first to go down this path and we expect many more carriers to offer handsets under their own brands.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
